Oh, yeah: my Sentinel is “Firekiller”, a reprogrammed Clockwork firefighter from Praetoria but the Resistance gave him the choice of staying in Praetoria or use the portal to Primal Earth. He chose the latter.
I hopped on the Sentinel bandwagon over the weekend. Mine is Josie Wales, Great-great-great-great-grandaughter of The Outlaw Josey Wales. Dual Pistols/Willpower, natural origin. I got in on a DfB, and then a Posi 1 TF, ended up at level 16…without using any of the bonus experience items.
I’ve got a redside tech origin Sentinel with dual pistols and dark armor, goes by the name Trouble Shooter. He’s got a great balance of offense and defense, and pretty much never runs out of Endurance.
Did I miss something? Why is there a Sentinel bandwagon? Is that a new class that just got introduced?
(I’m still in a mentality of “There are tankers, blasters, controllers, scrappers, and minion-guys, oh yeah, and Praetorian equivalents of those”).
Council were the new kids on the block anyway. Originally you just had 5th Column and then the developers, at some point, got cold feet about the Nazi thing and changed them into Council without the Nazi trappings. Forum gossip was that they did it to get around “No Nazis” stuff in Germany and other markets but the devs denied that it was an issue. A few years after, they got over it all and brought the 5th Column back. Kind of like TSR reacting to the Satanic Panic by changing the demons/devils into “not really demons/devils” in AD&D between 1st and 2nd edition then slipping them back in as devils & demons in later editions.
I remember this because my first “real” character’s origin was tied into 5th Column and then I had to add some lame “something something Council” at the end. Was glad when I was able to delete that line. Besides, what’s more heroic than Nazi-punching?
The Sentinel archetype was intended to be in the next issue when the game was shut down, so nobody got to play it before the Homecoming project.
I have yet to level a Sentinel to SO enhancement levels (22+) so I can’t speak to the AT’s desirability. I do have a few Blasters who have reached that level range, and the new “sustain” powers have made Blasters significantly tougher, although still the most fragile AT.
From reading varying opinions online, I believe we’re at a happy spot where Blasters outdamage Sentinels enough to be a viable choice, and Sentinels are tough enough to be worth making if you value the increased durability. Ideal game design would have each choice be viable for different reasons.
While everyone seems to promote the soloability of Sents, I have teamed with a few Sentinels and my impression so far is they’re “second-tier Blasters you don’t have to protect,” which is kind of nice. They do their own thing pretty reliably once slotted up.
I’ve been trying to concentrate more on one character and get someone to 50, and I’ve chosen the build I most regretted not spending time on when the game was shut down – my Storm/Dark Defender. Currently only 40, but finally have a number of key powers slotted up, and I’ve even managed to score some special IOs to extend my endurance – and one of the knockback-to-knockdown conversion pieces, which is YUUUUGE in Storm powers. The Stormy Knight has no status protection, but if played dynamically he can solo pretty well. Stuns and holds have to hit you, after all, and between Hurricane’s to-hit debuff and all the knockback/knockdown of the set, I don’t get hit much IF I am vigorous about making sure to apply the debuff. Storm is all about doing unto others before they can do unto you. I do have a back-up plan of sorts – if I get my Lightning Storm and Tornado (and to a lesser extent, Freezing Rain) out before I get stunned/slept/held, the enemies often have a hard enough time dealing with the weather that I can wait out the mezz and recover. It’s also funny that I can go into the Snipe animation and some enemy helplessly tries to reach me through Hurricane, getting slid backwards repeatedly, until the Snipe goes off in his face a few seconds later.
…and minion-guys?! How dare you forget Defenders, sir! 
Nothing beats a Stormy for sheer chaos control. I think peak chaos is Illusion/Storm, adding Confusion, Phantom Army, and Phantasm’s knockback into the mix. Cut loose with all that in a room, and the enemies won’t know what hit them (and neither will your team). Storm/Dark is great for stacking the ToHit debuffs, though.
For teamwork, herdicaning is a useful Stormy skill. If you’ve got a tank, you can run around, pushing stray mobs into the dogpile on the tank with Hurricane and Gale. If no one’s tanking, you use similar techniques to pile the mobs into an AoE-friendly corner. It’s handy for Dark’s minion-melter combo of Tentacles/Night Fall, too.
I believe I answered that in post #216: What’s more heroic than Nazi-punching is Nazi-punching at super-speed, while they’re suspended in mid-air.
They’re just Controllers with Blaster secondaries. 
Touché 
I was silently cursing to myself last night, strongly wanting to put in a “suggestion” that they nerf the hell out of Hurricane on enemy NPCs. Or at the very least, increase the cooldown on it. I was doing the Scroll of Tielekku storyline, wherein the Banished Pantheon are the main enemy group. It seemed like every mission map featured one Storm Shaman after another. I was on a melee character, and quickly discovered that it’s basically impossible to land a hit while standing in a Hurricane, so every fight against these guys (and it really felt like it was one after another after another) was primarily a matter of running/leaping to the opposite end of the room every time they cast it, and making them use up the duration fruitlessly chasing me around. Then trying to get in one or two hits after it expires before they immediately fire it up again. I mean, sure, I figured out how to beat Storm Shaman, but a strategy of “Run away! Run away!” gets really tiresome after about the 20th time.
On the subject to ToHit Debuffs, how about Circle of Thorns? I don’t know if something is off in the spawn calculations, or if I’m just having really bad luck, but every CoT mission I get seems to be filled wall-to-wall with those ghost/daemon things, and very few of the human CoT mobs. And often, the spawns are close enough together that I end up with six of those things piling on me, and there’s just no hope of hitting anything in that situation. I don’t remember it being this bad before.
I did that on my main. He’s got martial arts and has a lot of stuns. As soon as I see a storm shaman I run up to the punk and start pummeling him. The only way I found to beat those hurricanes was to prevent the SOBs from casting them in the first place. Boy do I hate them!
It’s not the ToHit Debuffs of those specters that bother me, it’s the Slows. My Tanker was a little short in the attack-chain department, so I’d be standing around waiting for my chance to hit them, while they fail to damage me. Same thing with the Council Marksmen and Crey Scientists with their freeze rays.
Do you have the “prestige powers” (I think that is what they are called) available for free on the P2W vendors? Basically, it’s three minor attacks–one of which will do extra damage according to your origin. I usually take Sands of Mu (melee), Nemesis Staff (range + knockback) and either Black Wand (range) or Ghost Slaying Axe (melee, +damage to undead). Those really help in those early levels when you don’t have many attacks…
What exactly counts as “undead”? High-level Skuls? Vasilok creations? Circle of Thorns specters? Anything else? They don’t seem common enough for a weapon optimized for them to make much sense.
Vahzilok do NOT count as undead, because they are specifically surgical constructs. COT specters DO, and it’s very gratifying to whack them with the axe. Ghosts from the Ghost Ship count, and I think there are ghosts in the Rogue Isles too, iirc.
The Axe was originally a temp power for a specific mission with bunch of Cot spectres, IIRC. However, there are enough true undead in some factions for it to be situationally useful, especially if your primary damage types are heavily resisted by them (which mostly means Dark). You may not have run into many of them, because they tend to show up in higher-level groups.
Its bonus works on CoT spectral daemons (all types), Banished Pantheon minions (all the minions are zombies) and Adamastor, Croatoan ghosts, Ghost Ship ghosts, Tsoo ancestor spirits, Halloween undead (ghosts, vampires, zombies, and Eochai’s Unseelie spirits), and (partially) on shivans. It works on Diabolique’s ghostly flunkies. Redside, it also works on spectral pirates and the Ghost of Scrapyard. It should work on a bunch of ghostly enemies in Night Ward, but I haven’t found that documented.
It does not work on Vahzilok; they count more as flesh golems than zombies, because mad science. It also doesn’t work on Ghost Widow and a few other things it seems like it should, but it will pop up a big “UNAFFECTED” notice in place of the damage numbers if the extra damage doesn’t apply.
All that said, even without the bonus, it does decent Lethal damage for low levels, and its animation time is a little quicker than Sands of Mu, so it’s not bad for rounding out an early attack chain. It gets put away sooner than the Nemesis Staff and Blackwand, but Dark characters benefit by keeping it in their back pocket for missions against Pantheon and CoT. (For the same reason, I prioritize getting the Archaeologist Day Job accolade and try to keep charges on its Rune of Purification power.)
Crap I didn’t know that the P2W vendors had free stuff. I could use some more attacks on some of my lower level characters. Thanks for the tip. 