Can somoene explain to me the mechanics of this AT?

[Mansome]

Hi All,

 

I gave this one a try this weekend and I am not sure as to what I am doing. It feels like a brute and dominator got together and had a child. I am noticing these opportunity things that pop up but I am not sure what is triggering it and not sure how to make it last longer. It does not appear to be like domination where you have a while to use this. Its too much work to fill the bar for only 5 seconds or so of this buff/debuff. Maybe I am doing this wrong can someone please how this needs to be played. Also in terms of def/resistance how does this compare to tank/brute/scrapper/stalker? Also how does the damage compare to blaster/defender/corrupter?

[Sunsette]

One of the central mechanics for Sentinel is the archetype's inherent power, Opportunity. Opportunity has two effects:

1. All damaging primary, secondary, and pool powers the Sentinel uses inflicts a small amount -def and -resistance to targets for 15 seconds.

2. Sentinels have a third combat bar (besides Health and Endurance) that grows as the Sentinel makes attacks, and decays when the Sentinel has neither attacked nor been targeted for an attack for several seconds. This decay is very slow and can take about 2 minutes to empty from a full bar. The bar does nothing until it is very close to full. When it is very close to full, a red circle will envelop the T1 power (the first power in the powerset list) and a green circle will envelop the T2 power (the second power in the list). Using and hitting with either of these powers will completely fill the bar and trigger either Offensive Opportunity (T1) or Defensive Opportunity (T2).

 

Both triggered versions put a targeting reticle around the struck foe for 15 seconds. This targeting reticle reduces the foe's damage resistance by -20%. Unlike many other sources of resistance reduction, this reduction cannot be resisted. This is a moderately powerful debuff, although it bears noting that debuff focused support characters can put out a lot more resistance reduction. For a high level sentinel, this is the most powerful part of Opportunity. At high levels, if one opportunity misses, it is usually not worth it to wait for it to recharge -- go for the other opportunity type instead as soon as possible, unless you really need the endurance savings from Defensive. However, low level sentinels will care more about which type they activate.

 

1. Offensive Opportunity (Red Circle). In addition to the above effects, while Offensive Opportunity is active, the Sentinel deals approximately 20% extra base damage to the primary target of their attacks, with all damaging primary, secondary, and pool powers.  If the attack has no target (as with point-blank or 'melee' AoEs), it does not get this benefit. This base damage does not scale with bonuses to damage. Thus, this is a lot of extra damage at the lowest levels when your enhancements are weak. At high levels, when you have various incarnate proc effects and fully enhanced powers, this is about 10% extra damage before including procs, and won't affect your best AoE attack at all as an Energy Blast sentinel.

 

2. Defensive Opportunity (Green Circle). In addition to the reticle effect, while Defensive Opportunity is active, the Sentinel gets a fairly significant amount of endurance back on a successful hit, and a minor amount (about 2-3% of base) of health back on a successful hit. Defensive Opportunity is all but worthless at the lowest levels, but begins to shine in mid-levels. Whether it continues to be of use at the highest level depends greatly on how much resistance you have and how much endurance you burn.

 

After 15 seconds, Opportunity will end, the bar will drain, and you'll have to start all over. You can expect roughly 50 to 60% uptime for Opportunity during a fight once you have a full attack chain.
 

---

On 8/5/2019 at 12:16 PM, Mansome said:

Also in terms of def/resistance how does this compare to tank/brute/scrapper/stalker?

 

As a general rule, brutes, stalkers, and scrappers get 75% of the strength that tankers do from resistance or defense-granting powers. Sentinels get 70%. Along with Sentinel having Blaster HP and the low caps for resistance, this is enough that resistance is usually not considered an ideal thing to build for primarily on Sents, though two resistance sets (Radiation and Fire) are notable for the amount of damage they deal, being very good offensive secondaries. ... But Bio is better at that and has more defense.

 

On 8/5/2019 at 12:16 PM, Mansome said:

Also how does the damage compare to blaster/defender/corrupter?

 

Blaster: Does about 25% more damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Defender: Does about 25% less damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Corruptor: Does about the same damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Sentinel is objectively weaker than all of these in most situations except for soloing while leveling up. It is not useless, however, as Sent brings a good deal of unresistable -res in its inherent and its quick recharging T9 abilities are excellent at clearing out mobs on a more regular basis than the other ATs. At 50 with good gear I have my T9 up every 25 seconds, which is basically every pull.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Sunsette

[oldskool]

8 hours ago, Sunsette said:

Blaster: Does about 25% more damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Defender: Does about 25% less damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Corruptor: Does about the same damage and can hit 40% more targets with AoEs.

Sentinel is objectively weaker than all of these in most situations except for soloing while leveling up. It is not useless, however, as Sent brings a good deal of unresistable -res in its inherent and its quick recharging T9 abilities are excellent at clearing out mobs on a more regular basis than the other ATs. At 50 with good gear I have my T9 up every 25 seconds, which is basically every pull.

Sentinel is objectively weaker on AoE mostly due to target caps.  Some blast sets have other factors and variables that push that even further.  Like Blaster/Defender/Corruptor Archery/Assault Rifle has a better uptime on Rain of Arrows/Full Auto vs Sentinels. 

 

Single-target damage between these ATs gets blurry and gets blurry real fast when talking complete builds.  Blasters by default do the most damage but there are a lot of players that do not build on that strength.  Instead, Blasters build to close the defensive weakness of the AT.  This often results in a lot of attacks slotted with 6pc Thunderstrikes vs a slotting strategy with more damage procs.  Some Defenders and Corruptors can get away with slotting less defense in their blasts and push more damage procs (sets like Time Manipulation are extremely good at allowing this).  Sentinels don't need to try nearly so hard covering their defensive bases since it is baked into their secondary.  Not all secondaries are created equal but even layered defense sets (e.g., Willpower, Energy Aura, etc.) can allow for better damage slotting in Sentinel primaries.  You couple the opportunity for better damage slotting (i.e., more procs) with better single-target rotations and Sentinels get far more competitive than they appear to on paper.  This gets better and better in the Incarnate realm where Sentinels don't need the Clarion/Agility/Spiritual/etc to close gaps.  Sentinels won't beat a Blaster when playing at the damage cap but for any other times the Sentinel can be very competitive. 

 

Sentinels live in a weird in-between world.  They have AoE target caps like a melee AT but can hit more surface area.  Due to certain power changes, many Sentinels have better single-target potential than other blast sets but always lack the burst damage of a Blaster.  Even though Sentinels can't burst like a Blaster their high consistency during self-buff downtime adds up to a lot of potential damage. 

[Rathulfr]

6 hours ago, oldskool said:

Sentinels live in a weird in-between world.  They have AoE target caps like a melee AT but can hit more surface area.  Due to certain power changes, many Sentinels have better single-target potential than other blast sets but always lack the burst damage of a Blaster.  Even though Sentinels can't burst like a Blaster their high consistency during self-buff downtime adds up to a lot of potential damage. 

 

One of the most common misconceptions I encounter is this age old argument about "DPS" (damage per second).  There is no denying that Blasters and Corruptors (and even some Defenders) have better DPS than Sentinels -- in most cases, the math is indisputable.  But my experience playing both Blasters and Sentinels all the way up to the end game is that DPS isn't the whole story.  When I talk about Sentinels, I try to shift the conversation to "DPE": damage per encounter (where "encounter" means a group of mobs). 

 

When I play Sentinels, I'm fighting/blasting almost non-stop, the whole time, until all of the mobs are down.  When I play Blasters/Corruptors, my combat is rarely "non-stop".  My attack chains are usually interrupted by something: the need for me move to shake aggro/mitigate damage/select targets, or the need to buff, de-buff, heal, or control a target.  Sure, my individual attacks have a higher DPS, but my DPS is zero (0.0/sec) when I'm kiting, dodging, moving, healing, (de-)buffing, or controlling.  Additionally, I seem to need to break for endurance recovery more often with my Blasters/Corruptors than with my Sentinels, because almost all of the Sentinel secondaries include +recovery powers, while fewer of the Blaster/Corruptor secondaries do.  So over the course of a protracted fight with an entire encounter, I feel like Sentinels do more sustained damage as whole, rather than the bursts of damage offered by Blasters/Corruptors.

 

In fact, over this past weekend, my friends and I were discussing this on Discord, and one of my friends (who's an excellent team leader) said (in so many words), "I prefer having Sentinels over Blasters on my teams because they just keep going, don't go down, and don't need as much babysitting."

 

I'm sure that this significantly varies from player to player and build to to build.  Admittedly, it's hard to tell that for sure without a robust combat logging and analysis tool (similar to Recount or Skada from the WoW universe).  Perhaps someone can do some experiments with the revived HeroStats to come up with some solid numbers.  But until we have those, I can only report my anecdotal experience. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Rathulfr

[Sunsette]

I don't really agree with the notion that blasters have endurance problems or that blasters need to reposition any more or less on average than Sentinels do. Sustained damage is a thing that becomes increasingly less of a thing the higher level you go, as groups are defeated with increasing quickness. AoE damage is really, really important in this game, so the lower AoE caps matter -- just as it matters that a Sent brings unresisted -res. 

 

Blasters run fewer toggles to begin with and generate more endurance to begin with. Several sentinel secondaries provide endurance protection by means of a click, which takes time, and there are blaster secondaries with endurance management too.

 

Yes, Sentinels need less babysitting. I didn't think that needed to be said, the additional defense is the point of the AT. This thread is quickly becoming yet another balance argument thread and I'm not signing up for that, and I'm not sure it's appropriate to do so here. This will be my last response if this remains the focus. 

Edited August 5, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

As of i24, every Blaster secondary has extremely powerful endurance management in its Sustain power (/NRG gets perma-Conserve Power, MM gets Drain Psyche, and everyone else gets an even stronger version of Quick Recovery). No decent Blaster build should have serious endurance problems past the mid levels.

 

I'm not sure why people say that Sentinel damage is below Corruptors. If you're comparing against a /Kin with Fulcrum Shift, sure, but otherwise it's at best a wash. Their base damage is substantially lower; for example, a /Rad Corruptor with AM up attacking a target in Enervating Field just barely gets to the same damage numbers as an unbuffed Sentinel, without even counting Opportunity. Worse, the Corruptor requires a nontrivial amount of "setup time" to do it, which the Sentinel gets to spend attacking instead. Scourge doesn't change the story much; naive calculations put it at a 25% DPS increase, but in practice it's less on normal targets, since by the time it has a high proc chance, the extra damage is all overkill.

 

AoE is a different story due to target caps, granted.

[Sunsette]

I would like to say, for the sake of clarity, that I did not say Corruptors and certainly not Defenders do more damage, not as a general case commentary. Corruptors do about the same damage while bringing powerful buffs. I had meant this to be implicit since I also said Defenders are stronger while also stating they deal less damage, then moved on to state the Sentinel's non-damage contribution.

 

This is just going to be another argument thread now isn't it ugh

Edited August 5, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

I hope not, lol.

 

So far I'm just leaning into the ST focus since that's what I'm good at, kind of like a Stalker. It works pretty well; there's always someone who can clean up minions.

[oldskool]

6 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

I hope not, lol.

 

So far I'm just leaning into the ST focus since that's what I'm good at, kind of like a Stalker. It works pretty well; there's always someone who can clean up minions.

This is exactly where I view the strength of the Sentinel.  I can't defend Sentinel AoE in any measure of good faith, but I do believe there are case arguments to be made for single-target.  

[WumpusRat]

Another thing to consider when it comes to the sentinel vs blaster/defender/corruptor comparison is that certain abilities for sentinels actually deal significant damage and/or have drastically lowered cooldowns. They also have some different abilities swapped in in place of ones that the other ATs have.

 

Some examples, comparing base damage and cooldowns:

 

Sonic Attack, Screech

Blaster: 12, 20s

Defender: 7, 20s

Corruptor: 8, 20s

Sentinel: 114, 12s

 

Psychic Blast, Scramble Thoughts

Blaster: 15

Defender: 9

Corruptor: 11

Sentinel: 178

 

Dual Pistols, Suppressive Fire

Blaster: 6, 20s

Defender: 4, 20s

Corruptor: 5, 20s

Sentinel: 82, 8s

 

A lot of "pure cc" abilities that the other ranged damage ATs get have been turned into a high-damage attack that can be used in an attack chain for a sentinel. 

[Sovera]

As I play I'm thinking that AoE caps don't matter as much as it may seem. We almost always initiate with a T9 after all. Two or more will be going off in a team. Minions are almost always wiped out in the initial T9 burst, and the remainder lieuts and bosses don't make more than ten targets. In practical terms the AoE cap is not, I feel, as limiting as it looks on paper.

 

Radius is more important and we have heaps of that.

 

That said any AoE that only hits six targets is just bad bad bad and ought to be fixed. At *least* ten targets, please.

 

My new elec/bio is doing a tremendous job at clearing out packs due to being able to have an AoE rotation it can sit down in the middle of a spawn and exert. As a bonus it also saps coincidentally, not something aimed for, but a happy side-effect. I just did a Manticore TF and reliably keeping the bosses from pulling their T9s was satisfying, furthermore as not built or even aiming for it, simply doing a DPS rotation.

[Hopeling]

11 minutes ago, Sovera said:

That said any AoE that only hits six targets is just bad bad bad and ought to be fixed. At *least* ten targets, please.

I think the idea is that it's supposed to roughly match melee cones, which mostly cap at 5 targets. Due to the larger area,  it's really easy to saturate a Sentinel cone at 6 targets, while it would be hard to hit more than 5 with most melee cones anyway.

 

The issue, IMO, is that Sentinel cones seem to still roughly follow the damage formula: they pay for their much larger area with decreased damage, compared to melee cones. Compare sentinel Fire Breath (88 damage, 16s recharge) to scrapper Sweeping Strike (106 damage, 11s recharge). After adjusting for AT modifiers, they do almost exactly the same damage... except Fire Breath has a longer recharge and higher endurance cost, which is supposed to be a tradeoff for hitting more targets, but for a Sentinel it can't.

 

And that's one of the stronger ranged cones! Energy Torrent vs Sweeping Strike is just depressing.

[Mercurias]

So what I’m getting as the gist of this thread so far is:

-Sentinels are an AT which allows one to use ranged blasts like a Corrupter, Defender, or Blaster while giving you armor like a Scrapper, Tanker, or Brute.

-Sentinels have a mechanic called Opportunity which buffs either their damage by 20% or helps them with their sustain, depending on which power is used to trigger it.

-Sentinel blasts sets have been adjusted to offer more options for heavy ST damage, but as a rule their overall damage output is lower than AoE heavy ranged blast ATs like Corrupters and Blasters.

-Sentinel Blast AoEs have a lower cap on their maximum targets than other ranged ATs, comparable to melee AoE target caps.

-Sentinel Armor power sets are adjusted from other ATs to allow for faster endurance recovery.

-Sentinels have smaller HP pools even with their protective secondary power set, which means they aren’t the best tank even with their armor skills.

-TL;DR, Sentinels are a ranged class with armor, designed to so more ST damage than AoE, and designed to have fewer Recovery problems. Their damage isn’t as high as a Blaster or some Corrupters/Defenders, but they’re much harder to put down.

 

Possible Sentinel Examples: Iron Man (Energy/Invuln), The Punisher (Dual Pistols or Assault Rifle/Willpower), Deadpool (Dual Pistols/Regen), Samus Aran (Beam Rifle/Willpower or Invuln), Halo’s Master Chief (AR/WP), Sunfire (Fire/Fire), Ice Man (Ice/Ice).

 

I personally have both a Beam Rifle/Willpower and a Psychic/Ninja Sentinel. They’re both a lot of fun to play, and I feel like I contribute plenty on teams.

[tjknight]

My favorite so far has been Dark Blast + Ninjitisu.  I haven't dinged 50 with him yet, because I alt too much. But so far that combo provides a nice blend of debuffs and defensive abilities. Plus, I like the idea of flooring the +tohit of enemies, as it helps the team out. For the most part, I don't mind doing 75% of the damage a blaster does. 75% damage is plenty for most purposes. Having less available AoE hasn't been a big problem for me either.  My Dark/Nin is a nice multi-purpose character that solos easily, and that's exactly what I wanted.

 

 

[Pharce]

Still trying to wrap my head around how best to use this inherent ability. I feel like i should save it for the boss or whatever but to do that means i cut my attack chain until i find the "right" target.

 

1. Do you just pop it every time it's up?

 

2. If defensive is the best at high lvls, Do you respec out of the tier one power?

It seems a shame to waste the -20% resist on a minion.

[oldskool]

19 minutes ago, Pharce said:

Still trying to wrap my head around how best to use this inherent ability. I feel like i should save it for the boss or whatever but to do that means i cut my attack chain until i find the "right" target.

 

1. Do you just pop it every time it's up?

 

2. If defensive is the best at high lvls, Do you respec out of the tier one power?

It seems a shame to waste the -20% resist on a minion.

I just pop it every time it is up and I don't give a lot of thought to the specifics any more on most of my Sentinels while leveling.  For my Dual Pistols/Ninjutsu, I only ever use Dual Wield to trigger Defensive Opportunity for the endurance management.  I have a sort of logical flow chart where I evaluate doing constant damage vs the animation lock of the endurance click heal.  For Ninjutsu, the endurance power is a click that will animation lock you for a bit.  That's a damage loss and sometimes I cannot afford to lock myself in an animation or take the damage hit.  So I use Dual Wield as a replacement in my attack chain just to leverage the benefit.  If I am fighting a singular tough opponent, and endurance isn't an issue, then I will just use my normal attack chain which includes Offensive Opportunity every 13 seconds.  For my Dark Blast Sentinel I just have Gloom and I don't think too hard about it.  Same goes my Water Blast Sentinel.  I use Aqua Bolt as a set mule and have no need to ever click it. 

 

I'd say be real careful of looking at defensive as "the best" at high levels.  Just how good Defensive Opportunity is depends a lot on a few factors.  Some secondaries like Regeneration, Willpower, and Super Reflexes have a lot of passive endurance gain.  Some Primaries may yield more efficient endurance spend than others and so on.  For sets like the ones I mentioned, things like Pine's do not represent how those procs (or the Panacea's proc) influence endurance returns.  You could be hypothetically swimming in endurance and at that point Defensive Opportunity doesn't really matter for it's endurance return. 

 

Some Primaries have a Tier 1 power that is higher DPA than the Tier 2 and vice versa.  Some Primaries have powers later in the set that are so good you'll never use the T1 or T2 outside of clicking for opportunity.  Archery and Beam Rifle are both examples where their T1 and T2 can be dropped from their ideal attack routines with high recharge.  Dual Pistols has a T1 better than the T2 (Pistols vs Dual Wield).  Dark Blast has a T2 (Gloom) that is better than the T1 (Dark Blast) but no other power to replace it outside of Epic/Patrons (Lifedrain is pretty terrible). 

 

Both Offensive and Defensive Opportunity impose the same -20% resist. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by oldskool

[Pharce]

That helps thanks. I'm currently running a Fire/Rad lvl 23. But i Also have a lvl 32 water/ Electric.

[Hopeling]

I basically just use it when it's up. If possible I try to swap to a boss to apply the debuff, but if not, oh well.