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GWF - Sentinel Line, DON'T DO IT!
argantis
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Well the servers are down and I have had some time to really play around with the GWF and the GF a bit. First of all, don't make the mistake of ever thinking the GWF is a defender. They simply are not. Every one of their threat and self heal mechanics are garbage. They can barely mark and when they do it don't last for long. Daring shout is a joke, I thought it would be an AoE circumference, not some short cone attack that is hard to even land without much benefit for the effort. There are no taunts, pure and simple, you will never taunt as a GWF. On top of all that, your survival is probably lower than a Guardian of half the level, aside from the obvious hit point disparity.
I tried and tried to get the Sentinel to work as an add tank and really, it just don't work. You put everything you have into survival and threat and it still don't work, plus you do pathetic damage. Have fun being 4th or 5th in damage with that sentinel build, the guardian fighters will out tank and out damage you. I am just putting this out there to save people time. If you want to tank in any fashion in this game, just play a Guardian. That whole GWF is a defender is just garbage, complete and utter garbage. Don't make the mistake of believing the lie.
The offensive builds work well. Instigator for PvP or a CA build, and Destroyer for a pure PvE damage build. You are going to suck until you get to the late 30's early 40's in level and get Weapon Masters Strike along with some paragon feats. All Str / Dex in your build. If you want take some of the 3 point defensive feats to help survival some.
Every GWF will have power as their top tier stat, the purple gear makes it so. Defense will be on your gear as well, your next highest stat, then Critical and Armor Penetration followed up with Recovery. Just so you know what the default stat priority is on the purple gear we get in end game.
Can you take a hit? Yeah sure, but that is by virtue of some passives like Bravery and your defense rating and nothing else. Sure the Sentinel can build for a ton of survival, but don't make the mistake of ever thinking that you are going to generate any threat in that build, and good luck with mitigating anything without Con bonus or a block mechanic. Just save yourself the headache, and play an offensive build or roll a Guardian if you want to tank.
I tried and tried to get the Sentinel to work as an add tank and really, it just don't work. You put everything you have into survival and threat and it still don't work, plus you do pathetic damage. Have fun being 4th or 5th in damage with that sentinel build, the guardian fighters will out tank and out damage you. I am just putting this out there to save people time. If you want to tank in any fashion in this game, just play a Guardian. That whole GWF is a defender is just garbage, complete and utter garbage. Don't make the mistake of believing the lie.
The offensive builds work well. Instigator for PvP or a CA build, and Destroyer for a pure PvE damage build. You are going to suck until you get to the late 30's early 40's in level and get Weapon Masters Strike along with some paragon feats. All Str / Dex in your build. If you want take some of the 3 point defensive feats to help survival some.
Every GWF will have power as their top tier stat, the purple gear makes it so. Defense will be on your gear as well, your next highest stat, then Critical and Armor Penetration followed up with Recovery. Just so you know what the default stat priority is on the purple gear we get in end game.
Can you take a hit? Yeah sure, but that is by virtue of some passives like Bravery and your defense rating and nothing else. Sure the Sentinel can build for a ton of survival, but don't make the mistake of ever thinking that you are going to generate any threat in that build, and good luck with mitigating anything without Con bonus or a block mechanic. Just save yourself the headache, and play an offensive build or roll a Guardian if you want to tank.
Post edited by argantis on
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Yeah you will have that hands down, and most CW as well. The TR is the main goal to shoot for on an offensive build and you can actually beat them sometimes as well. If they are a bad player or bad build. Equal play skill and build I think an offensive GWF will be back and fort with the TR on damage. A lot of it depends on who is the first to run in and pull, because no one really waits for the GF in pick up groups. I sure hope at level 60 they die for that.
It is broken really badly. It may work, but it is going to need an overhaul. There are several drawbacks to the line.
First of all Sure Strike is your best threat. But that is pretty much a single target attack. The GF Cleave has more AoE than Sure Strike does. It also is the lowest damage At-Will of them all to start with. So that right there kills your AoE damage ability. Then you have that crappy talent to make Come and Get it and Daring Shout do damage and threat. The damage is so little that you will generate more threat with a normal AoE damage attack like Mighty Leap. Daring Shout had to be my biggest disappointment. Not only is it super hard to hit anything, because stuff don't just line up and stand in a cone for you, but it also has a really bad mark mechanic. As soon as the mobs hit you the mark goes poof. So that makes that whole other 5 point talent to do 15% damage to marked targets pretty useless too.
Let me put it this way. The Guardian fighter gets an AoE mark / taunt / damage Encounter Power as a base 5 power. It works really well. On top of that, you can attack with your left button while blocking at that serves as an At-Will taunt. I don't know what they were thinking with the GWF, but the threat mechanics are just not there at all. Then when you factor in that you are forced into Dex and Deflection over con and mitigation..... It is just bad.
To make matters worse, you pretty much must have a cleric companion. GWF is the least survivable class. TR has stealth and bait and switch, which are up about four times more than the GWF determination. CW has plenty of control effects to not get hit. Even the DC has heals and control. Not only is the Sentinel a bad build, you will take more potions than any other class in the game, hands down, even as a Sentinel. If that don't scream broken defender, I don't know what does.
Due to AoE attacks you will be able to outdamage even TR's in some of the higher level areas where enemies cluster. They'll still be the masters of shredding single opponents, but the TR is more like a high-quality chef's knife while the GWF is the food processor.
^ @ this comment, I was about tied with another rogue at about equal GS. As I stated before though, is the jump from 7600 to 9200 so huge that it would cause a double of damage?
IMO the GWF is the most gear dependent class too. We get all of those stat synergies in our feats like Defense to Power and Recovery to Armor Penetration and Power to Bleed. So when we have a stat that is suffering, we really suffer as a class.
The single advantage to a properly equipped Sentinel is that fact that you can shrug off considerable amounts of damage that would otherwise quickly flatten anyone else but a GF. The problem, as Argantis mentioned, is that Sentinel threat generation is sketchy at best. A Sentinel has to make some considerable sacrifices to obtain an edge in survivability, with somewhat limited utility at this time. We do get some decent debuffs, although that can be obtained via a DPS spec as well.
I should see a considerable leap in my GS later this week, so I'll post my thoughts at that time. I still feel that there are some issues with the base threat values on the associated threat generation feats within the Sentinel tree.
| Lust | Level 60 Guardian Fighter 15.8k GS|
Argantis friend, you do realize that even Guardian Fighter does not have mitigation bonus on CON anymore?
Now, to the actual point of this thread - I'm full sentinel and I'm absolutely loving it. The biggest issue I think that you have is that you're trying to make it work as a main tank. It's not, and it will not be a tank, Sentinel is an offtank spec and it has one mechanic of gaining threat - damage.
Some highlights of how I built myself:
Half Orc and all out 25 STR, 15 CON, 25 DEX with camp bonus (-1 otherwise). My base crit chance is 33%, with fully stacked weapon master that goes up to 43% (sic! It adds 10% rather than 7.5% for some reason). My base deflect chance with 0 deflect rating on gear is 27.5%, this goes up to 42.5% with weapon master stacked with feats. My defense is rather low, still, as I'm wearing all greens for now at 60 (**** you maintenance!) spare weapon and neck, so my mitigation there is around 35%.
Heroic Feats:
Disciple of Strength 3/3
Toughness 3/3
Endless Assault 3/3
Armor Specialization 3/3
Steely Defense 3/5
Devastating Critical 3/3
Weapon Mastery 2/3
Paragon Feats (sentinel):
Student of the Sword 5/5
Scale Agility 5/5
Grudge Style 5/5
Master at Arms 5/5
Sentinel's Aegis 1/1
Paragon Feats (destroyer):
Great Weapon Focus 5/5
Deep Gash 5/5
As you can clearly see, crit is my primary focus through the whole build. My sure strike has 48% chance to crit, which means I get 16% free threat from grudge style not counting the crit chance it gives me.
Passives (no surprises here):
Bravery - free deflect is the best deflect
Weapon Master - 10% crit (again, sic!), 15% deflect and 5 AC with feats, this is the thing that defines the while paragon feat tree for me.
At-wills:
Sure Strike - for single target.
Wicked Strike - for aoe, this is one thing I'm not sure about. WMS could be a better choice, I'll do some extra testing eventually, but without the feat from Destroyer the dps seems to be not much different if at all, and Wicked Strike has a wider arc which is not a bad thing.
Encounters:
Indomitable Battle Strike
Mighty Leap
Restoring Strike
Dailies:
whatever, I'm using avalanche of steel and crescendo atm.
The spec does *very* respectable damage still, and the extra mitigation and deflect does save your skin. Restoring strike heals me for 10% of my hp on crits, and it will only get better once I get a purple weapon. Also, having two hard hitting encounter powers makes you not completely useless on single target fights (having an 8k crit followed by a 5k crit is not bad at all) and IBS can hit multiple targets anyway if they are lined up.
Most importantly, I can either do a lot of aoe damage without anyone else tanking the mobs and live and I'm able to hold threat on a single target tough guys if necessary, also know as off-tanking which is what the build is about.
And in live i am using sentinel (for now)
but for group dungeons, intigator is the best
Old "Blood and Sand: Unchained" quest
Played more than 100 000 times!
> TRY IT NOW!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ecy4o6JqLc
They don't we have this issue at level 60 too with players running ahead of the GF and pulling before hand... in Tier 2 some times they take a spike but don't really die unless the GF leaves them with the threat then they tend to run around like headless chickens confused and bewilder.
Heh, very nice. I've actually been using this build for a while too. It works nice for PVE, but I'm having trouble with it in PVP. The damage mitigation just doesn't seem to be enough to handle the massive damage being thrown at me from the other classes. The criticals help, but again, they just don't seem to be enough. The other classes just seem to shrug off the hits I do most of the time.
I am seriously considering switching from Sentinel to Instigator. Has anyone had any experience with an Instigator build in PVP? What feats and powers would you recommend for an Instigator PVP build?
Yah, I did it purely with PvE in mind (which is actually new to me :P), I wouldn't imagine using it on PvP be effective
edit: also it seems I'm too tired to think already. Grudge Style with that crit is 16% more threat, no 12%.
This build has really helped me out! I started using this spec since level 15. ATM I'm level 43 & I'm loving it so far. I was ready to give up with GWF, so frustrated with the lack of power, but not any more! I've been soloing all the content so far & of course having a healing companion has saved my *** plenty of times. THX terhix!
More personal survivability.
While that's also the case, it doesn't address a good portion of the tree. Try reading the description of the tree prior to selecting paragon feats if you ever do respec, or simply take a look at all the threat generating feats.
People need to stop acting like everything is ok, T2 Epics are a joke (many boss encounters take little effort with a "proper" party setup) because of poorly designed fight mechanics. Even if Sentinels did have their threat issues fixed, I do wonder if it would really matter without the encounters themselves being re-tuned as well.
I'm starting to think the tree should be turned into more of a support/warlord style path, because Cryptic can't seem to understand how to fix the threat issues. It needs some feats that set it apart from DPS specs in terms of group viability - ones that actually work would be nice.
| Lust | Level 60 Guardian Fighter 15.8k GS|