1st time Sentinel here! Help!

[VoidWolf3]

Hi all!

 

Like the title says, 1st time trying to create a Sentinel and it seems a little daunting so hopefully will be able to grab some advice from more experienced Sentinel players.

 

I have a concept for a Psy/ character and it was either going to be a /Mental Blaster or a /SR Sentinel. Psy/ doesn't seem to be the most popular of primaries and thus i've had trouble trying to find info on it. Never the less i have a concept that i think will be fun on paper.

 

My questions are - a)  will it be an enjoyable ride to 50 and not a slug fest if im solo?  b) A welcomed addition to end game content and not considered lacklaster dps?  c) What am I building for with /SR on a Sentinel? im assuming posi def, then recharge and recovery?  d) Power Pool picks seem slim with /SR as always so minus the Speed power pool what is good to prioritise?

 

To put into context i would like to be able to run into a mob, Wail, Shockwave and then get outta there and start my ST rotation with Shockwave thrown in the mix when needed (yes i want to be taking Psi Mastery...and by the looks of it, everything except Mass Hypnosis). I guess im worried about the damage output at end game, but if the damage scale is slightly less than a blaster but the survivability is far superior and easier/cheaper to build with using IO's then that's all i need.

 

I hope that all makes sense to someone out there! I don't mind posting a build of at least my power picks once i've tinkered in Pines some more. If someone has any builds of their own by all means...it at least gives me something to build on 🙂

 

Cheers Everyone

Void 

                                                                               

[oldskool]

I have not yet written a write-up on Psychic Blast, or any others beyond Dual Pistols for that matter, but I plan to.

 

Psychic Blast as a whole hell of a lot going for it.  For PVE its good.  For PVP its broken and pretty freaking obnoxious.  Since you want to maybe go /SR, then I doubt you're going to PVP.  So I won't focus on that. 😉

 

Will it be an enjoyable ride to 50?  If you are interested in the set, then I don't see why it wouldn't be.  Robots will always annoy you but that's a cost of doing business with psi damage. 

 

Will it be a welcome addition to end game content?  Sure.  Psychic attacks have a reputation as tickling enemies in the end game.  Its a little overstated.  Some enemies do resist between 50% to 60% psychic damage but this is so blown out of proportion that it makes it seem like everything resists this much psychic damage.  The sky is falling only for Chicken Little.  Here is a list from the old boards with a breakdown on psychic resistance and enemy factions (https://web.archive.org/web/20120906114847/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291898). 

 

You build for positional defense with /SR.  You can accomplish this by expanding into the power pools for Weave + Combat Jumping.  IO sets will help complete the soft-cap.  Link Minds will also work wonders and you seem intent to take it (no reason not to).  There are so many ways to do this I can't really fit that in one quick response.  Also the influence cost, power selection cost, and slot cost are also variables too.  It is totally possible to hit 45%+ with a plan.  Recovery is baked into the Sentinel set as is some recharge.  Actually /SR of any AT makes building for recharge far less expensive than usual which is a nice selling point to the set. 

 

You can run into a mob, Psychic Wail -> Tornado -> Shockwave and just stay in melee range if you wished.  Enemies have to hit you first which is pretty hard to do when you've stunned a lot of them with Wail, knocked them down with tornado, and made them slower through secondary effects. 

 

Damage wise, and it is a valid concern, use procs.  Aim for high recharge so you can avoid having to use either of the T1 or T2 in regular rotation.  Respec out of Psionic Strike for an endgame build and replace it with Dominate in Psi mastery.  Proc the hell out of Dominate.

 

Dominate - load it with as many damage procs as you can.  Especially Unbreakable Constraint for a source of Smashing damage and potentially Gladiator's Net for Lethal.  Decimation Chance for Buildup is also a nice option here.  Gladiator's Javelin offers a toxic damage proc.  Take that too if you can afford it.  Diversify from psychic only damage and the issues at endgame will be FAR less painful.

 

Will Domination - I personally like Apocalypse here and I keep the Negative damage proc here to diversify the damage.  6th slot gets a Toxic proc to again diversify damage.

 

Scramble Thoughts - it is a slow attack but by God does it make use of the Opportunity Strikes ATO proc.  I use the 5 pc set for the recharge bonus plus the proc.  The 6th slot is again a Toxic damage.  The base cool down and long animation are about as perfect of a condition to reliably trigger a PPM 2 effect like the ATO as it gets in Sentinels.  The reason why I suggest this here is a few reasons.  1) Dominate won't take it, 2) Will Domination is higher DPA and better served with Apocalypse, and 3) higher up time on opportunity means more action on a 20% resistance debuff. 

 

What I attack with at ranged for Psy - Dominate -> Will Domination -> Scramble Thoughts -> Will Domination.  Rinse, repeat.  When Opportunity is up, use either Mental Blast or TK Blast which ever you didn't skip.  How comfortable your overall endurance management is will be the deciding factor.  TK Blast has an edge if you want to exemplar* as it does better damage and Defensive Opportunity is generally smoother than Offensive Opportunity in my opinion.  If you're in melee, then say hello with Mind Probe right after Dominate (and hope that the Buildup proc boosts its damage).

 

*For exemplaring, I'd recommend a second build.  Much of the goodies that really make Psychic Blast + Psychic Mastery so nice are all late bloomers.  This means skipping 1 of the first tier abilities, possibly skipping the cone attack, and skipping Psi Strike.  That would mean the 1 first level attack + Will Domination + Tornado in something like the Positron TF.  For anything else where you can keep Scramble Thoughts its not so bad.

 

I'll just restate something I find myself always stating.  Defense-based sets like Super Reflexes let you maximize damage potential of any primary because you can add procs to everything.  There is no reason at all to bother with chasing defensive IOs in your ranged attacks.  You only do that if you're wanting to try for the Incarnate soft-cap of 59%.  So ignore that Thunderstrike even exists and frankeslot your attacks. 

Psychic Blast + Super Reflexes is a very solid pairing for PVE. 

Edited August 27, 2019 by oldskool

[XaoGarrent]

Psi on Sentinels isn't so great, but it's also not the worst. Weak in the AoE damage department and slightly mundane in single target, it's lower than middle of the pack in practice... Like the other Psi sets, you'll see real good performance while leveling and against popular enemy groups with sparse Psi resists on nonthreatening enemies, but the flip side of this is that you're going to see absolutely horrible performance when you run into enemy groups where more exotic features and enemies show up.

 

Bad performance will become more and more common later in the game, as extremely heavy Psi resists proliferate. It'll get you there, but it'll be more rough as time goes on, especially without a damage boosting secondary, and you're going to have to work and twink once you actually get there.

 

The Sentinel version of Super Reflexes is a terrific set specifically for defense, in fact it's easy to form a sound argument as to it being better than the melee AT version... At least when measured in a vacuum. The Sentinel meta, as in what makes a good sentinel just so good, currently surrounds taking a damage boosting secondary and using it to prop up the Sentinel's mediocre damage to more competitive levels... Or even better, straight up picking a primary that already does good-ish damage, especially AoE, and turning them into a tanknuke.

 

SR is better than some other options for this, because it DOES have a cooldown reducing passive... But it's still below the likes of Bio, Rad and to a lesser extent Fire and Nin.

 

In end game, you can try to get around the weaknesses by leaning on the high base values in order to rearrange your IO slotting around proc abuse, but the problem with this is that many setups with Bio or Rad don't even need to do this... Yet at the same time, can still do it reasonably well, if you really want to, and they will have even more damage boosting that exists outside of ED'd diminishing returns. Due to the way PPM (procs per minute) works, you're also going to want a bucket of Luck of the Gamblers if you want recharge, so prepare for that expensive investment.

 

I would not recommend this for your first Sentinel, really. It's a bit too twinky of a build. If you're going to run this, maybe roll up a farming toon and grind out some Inf ahead of time.

[VoidWolf3]

Wow! thank you both, that's a lot to consider!

 

I ended up creating the toon last night before bed so i'll see what the next couple of days worth of levelling hold and if its somewhat lacklaster and grindy then i might have to rethink my options.

 

I currently am planning on a hasten-less build (because power picks are slim outside primary/secondary/epics. And recharge doesn't seem to be an issue with quickness and set recharge bonuses) so looking at boxing, tough, weave, CJ and SS for thematic reasons. Will post a rough build shortly 🙂

 

Void

[biostem]

I have to be honest, here - I very much dislike some of the psy blast animations and sounds.  While they may be effective on paper, in practice, I need to play a set whose animations and "real world" performance is to my liking.  Since you have so many character slots at your disposal, here's what I'd suggest - try out all the blast sets, run around the starting zone and see which you like best...

[Sovera]

I've played several Sentinels and now I'm trying a blaster, and i have to say that Sentinel is really really top notch for a player who wants to be durable and do pew pews. The blaster I'm trying now does stupid amounts of damage and with having a Aim and Build-up completely surpasses the Sentinel, but good grief, go into melee, get stunned, stun wears off, prepare to continue, get slept. In the meanwhile damage is flying and we are squishy.

 

I mean, yes, once I am level 50, and once I have incarnates, and once I've sunk half a billion minimum, then boom, watch my blaster tear through content! But in the meanwhile the Sentinel's nuke recharges in 25 seconds, not 40, so it's up every spawn, or at most every second spawn, where the blaster's omgwtfbbq nuke is up every two spawns, possibly every three. It makes a *lot* of difference to start combat each time having killed all minions and hurt all lieutenants. We have just cut down damage in half. In the case of T9s with CC effects the mobs still alive are staggering and not retaliating.

 

I was exemplaring to play with a friend of mine who has a stalker and the poor thing barely had anything to do despite having increased the number of mobs to +2x6. We'd reach a pack, I'd T9, almost everything died.

 

Now, I'm pretty bias for ninjutsu. It has almost SR levels of defense but also a heal and an endurance recovery power which SR sorely lacks. No heal means relying on inspirations or trying to use Aid Self which isn't very good with the interrupts stopping it.

 

If you look a bit further below I have a radiation/Ninjutsu build bent towards AoE. Feel free to pick it up and since all the defense is from ninjutsu you can replace the primary for anything you'd like without impacting the build's defenses.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Sovera

[Six-Six]

I'm fairly new to the game. Fell in love with sentinels because of my play style. I solo a lot, early game I do guerrilla warfare: shoot and run away to lead them away to where I can handle them, repeat until it whittles down the mob. mid game, if you pay attention to your defences and resistance (as well as HP, regen, end and recovery), the sentinel pretty much holds his own. Yes they don't do much damage, but they can take a beating to keep on dealing damage. I think this goes for any primary you pick. Some secondaries are either toggle/click-management intensive or not as beefy as others within the sentinel AT. In fact in most of my sents, I don't even have to max out def and res or even slots, allowing me to max out slots on attacks, which sents desperately needs. at level 20-30, I can confidently go +1/+2 or even +2/+4. Late game and 50+, Sentinels are just beasts that can just stand there and take it. This is the fun part: run in - nuke - (skip running out) and just clean up whoever's left standing. Sometimes I even run around collecting two or three mobs to congregate around me before I nuke them twice or thrice with primary, Epic, and incarnate pbaoe's. One time, I went AFK, and a small mob ambushed me. I don't know how long they've been whacking at me, but they weren't making a dent.

Sentinels are fun.

[DocRadio]

I have a vet 8 level triple fire sentinel...

 

I've been told that I'm supposed to think I have awful damage. I think my damage is inferior to a fire blaster's output.... but I tear through content faster than a blaster can because I'm not constantly stocking up on break frees and running for my life. Sure I'm no tank but I can casually confront spawns head on without the careful consideration that my blaster had to bring to almost every fight. The point being is... you'll have decent status protection and actual defense that can be capped. Your damage might not stack up where you'd like, but your defense means it doesn't HAVE to.

Go nuts... you'll probably have a good time.

[tjknight]

3 hours ago, DocRadio said:

I have a vet 8 level triple fire sentinel...

 

I've been told that I'm supposed to think I have awful damage. I think my damage is inferior to a fire blaster's output.... but I tear through content faster than a blaster can because I'm not constantly stocking up on break frees and running for my life. Sure I'm no tank but I can casually confront spawns head on without the careful consideration that my blaster had to bring to almost every fight. The point being is... you'll have decent status protection and actual defense that can be capped. Your damage might not stack up where you'd like, but your defense means it doesn't HAVE to.

Go nuts... you'll probably have a good time.

This right here. 

 

On 8/27/2019 at 12:50 PM, XaoGarrent said:

Bad performance will become more and more common later in the game, as extremely heavy Psi resists proliferate. It'll get you there, but it'll be more rough as time goes on, especially without a damage boosting secondary, and you're going to have to work and twink once you actually get there.

 

 People keep saying this, but it hasn't been my experience. I have a lvl 50+ Fortunata, and she tears through content. There have been very few incidents where I've felt her damage lacking. If I were the OP I'd give a Psi Sentinel a try, but I'd probably go Psi/Regen just because regen is so low maintenance. 

[XaoGarrent]

1 hour ago, tjknight said:

This right here. 

 

 People keep saying this, but it hasn't been my experience. I have a lvl 50+ Fortunata, and she tears through content. There have been very few incidents where I've felt her damage lacking. If I were the OP I'd give a Psi Sentinel a try, but I'd probably go Psi/Regen just because regen is so low maintenance. 

VEATs are a very, very different case. Most trends that apply everywhere else don't apply to them just because they're so damn good in general.

[oldskool]

2 hours ago, XaoGarrent said:

VEATs are a very, very different case. Most trends that apply everywhere else don't apply to them just because they're so damn good in general.

A fully ranged Fortunata isn't that different a case.  You can build for purely ranged Psi damage which means the attacks you take aren't dissimilar from a Sentinel in terms of type.  

So a point can be made that if you don't run into issues with that character there is little reason to suspect that a Sentinel will be hurt any more than the Fortunata.  Having run both, there really isn't that much of a difference in terms of offensive play.  The differences are more in how the support powers from the secondary of the Fortunata interact with groups vs how Sentinels have no such option. 

[XaoGarrent]

19 minutes ago, oldskool said:

A fully ranged Fortunata isn't that different a case.  You can build for purely ranged Psi damage which means the attacks you take aren't dissimilar from a Sentinel in terms of type.  

So a point can be made that if you don't run into issues with that character there is little reason to suspect that a Sentinel will be hurt any more than the Fortunata.  Having run both, there really isn't that much of a difference in terms of offensive play.  The differences are more in how the support powers from the secondary of the Fortunata interact with groups vs how Sentinels have no such option. 

What you're doing is like saying "A tanker is on par with a Scrapper for damage" and trying to prove this by showing a build where the scrapper skips build up and all their high tier attacks. Nevermind that the base damage scalars aren't even the same. Yeah, if you go ignoring half an AT's kit, you tend to get really bad ideas about balance.

[oldskool]

2 hours ago, XaoGarrent said:

What you're doing is like saying "A tanker is on par with a Scrapper for damage" and trying to prove this by showing a build where the scrapper skips build up and all their high tier attacks. Nevermind that the base damage scalars aren't even the same. Yeah, if you go ignoring half an AT's kit, you tend to get really bad ideas about balance.

No, not even close.  That isn't what is being said at all.

 

First off, Tankers and Scrappers have a damage dealing gap on melee of 0.8 vs 1.125, respectively.  Fortunata's ranged scalar is 1.0.  Sentinel's have a ranged scalar of 0.95.  Their base damage isn't nearly so far off from one another that this is anything like me saying "A Tanker is on par with a Scrapper for damage".  

Second, what was being said is this...  A ranged-focused psychic damage heavy Fortunata can handle content at level 50 just fine.  Sure, there are enemies that ignore significant Psi damage but it is not so much of an issue that it isn't playable.  Since that specific brand of Fortunata is psychic heavy and doesn't experience much in the way issues, then a Sentinel shouldn't either.  I happened to concur with @tjknight's assessment.   That's it. 

Fortunata Training shares the following powers available in Sentinel Psychic Blast:

 

Mental Blast

Telekinetic Blast

Psychic Scream

Aim

Psychic Tornado

Psychic Wail

 

So again, not so unreasonable of an observation as it may seem to you. 

What I did not state:

 

1) Psychic heavy ranged only Fortunatas are optimal

2) There are no differences in game play or damage scalars

3) There is no hang ups from resistance heavy enemies

4) That X is on par with Y -- The statement was that the damage type of one build of Fortunata is not dissimilar to the Sentinel in question.  That's it.

5) That "here is a build proving X is on par with Y" 

 

Edited September 4, 2019 by oldskool