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Why Sentinel GWF should be deleted
zvieris
Member Posts: 1,261 Arc User
So ok, mod 6 came and there were several changes to GWF. Some of them from the top of my head:
Now let's see... Sentinel now has 250% threat generation from capstone, 50% from tier 5 feat, 500% from tier 4 feat and 100% from mark. That sums up to a nice round 900% threat generation sum, which is even greater than what Paladin or GF can achieve. Now that would normally indicate that the path should be used for tanking, right?
Now what makes a tank good? Tank is a class that protects his group from harm, were it:
Now for option a) we have Guardian Fighter that can use KV and mitigate the damage the group takes by 50%, awesome! We also have Paladin who can mitigate damage taken with auras, sanctuary and dailies from 50% mitigation to 100%! That's amazing! Now Sentinel should have something too, being tank and all, yeah? Nope! All the Sentinel GWF has is Sentinel tier 3 feat Living Wall which reduces the damage his allies take from 5% to 10%... Not very cool, huh... But maybe GWF is so great at option b) that there's no need for option a)? Nope!
Since the temporary hitpoint revamp GWF can get slightly more hitpoints and they no longer disappear after unstoppable ends. Sounds pretty cool, huh? But... the bonus temporary hitpoints you get is based purely on your multiplicative damage bonuses. Now Sentinel has power for damage bonus, hidden daggers for 40%, Wrathful determination for up to 25% more and that's pretty much it for single combat. Now let's see the dps tree Destroyer: power bonus, 40% from hidden daggers, 25% from wrathful determination, 46.5% from destroyer and 50% from capstone... So yep, Destroyer gains more temp hitpoints. But Sentinel can mitigate moar damage with Unstoppable right, riiight? That's true, however, you don't gain determination from taking hits as long as you have temporary hitpoints remaining and Destroyer gains determination simply from attacking. Which sums up to Destroyer having much higher Unstoppable uptime than Sentinel. Which means the damage dealing tree Destroyer is tankier than tanking tree Sentinel? WHAAT!?
"B-but Sentinel has that awesome tier 5 feat which increases AC and deflection for slotting Weapon Master feature and also capstone improve defense rating and Restoring Strike heals 50% more!" you'll say. Now let's see what that equals to. 5 AC means additional 2.5% DR which is nice, capstone adds +20% defense effectiveness, so if you have 10k def it's additional 5% DR. Pretty cool. You also get up to 12% deflection chance too. Sweet. But wait... Destroyer can simply equip Warrior's Courage which grants 20% additional DR when bellow 50% hp and 12% deflection chance when bellow 25% hitpoints and Bravery which adds 10% deflection chance. That's almost the same as Sentinel using feated Weapon Master and Bravery/Warrior's Courage! As for Restoring Strike healing 50% more... The healing you get is proportional to the damage you inflict. Since Destroyer deals more damage, he heals more.
That concludes that Sentinel and Destroyer have nearly the same level of tankyness. That's dps and tank trees for you. Not too shabby, huh? Moreover, Destroyer deals at the very least 50% more damage ignoring features used. In mod 4-5 Sentinel dealt damage using Intimidation feat, so maybe that's still viable? Nope! The damage was nerfed from 30% of power and all damage modifiers working to 150% weapon damage and not even ArPen working along with it. You'll be better off using at-wills.
Maybe it's just Destroyer that's broken and Sentinel is as tanky as the other tanks? Nope! GF has a shield which mitigates any damage taken by 80% which is another layer after DR mitigation takes place. Also has much higher DR from equipment/feats, powers. Paladin on the other hand can cap DR without moving a finger, has encounters that grant hundreds of thousands of temporary hitpoints, has encounter that absorbs all damage, has encounter that heals and dailies that absorb from 50% to 80% damage taken for 20-24s. So yeah, that's that.
Conclusion/TL;DR: Sentinel GWF is as tanky as Destroyer GWF but deals much lower damage. Sentinel is also far worse tank than any other in the history of MMOs. So please, do us all a favor and put Sentinel out of its misery. Delete this feat tree.
- Destroyer capstone improved
- Unstoppable temporary hitpoints reworked
- Sentinel Threat generation improved
- Sentinel Intimidation feat nerfed
Now let's see... Sentinel now has 250% threat generation from capstone, 50% from tier 5 feat, 500% from tier 4 feat and 100% from mark. That sums up to a nice round 900% threat generation sum, which is even greater than what Paladin or GF can achieve. Now that would normally indicate that the path should be used for tanking, right?
Now what makes a tank good? Tank is a class that protects his group from harm, were it:
- mitigating the damage the group takes,
- taking control of the boss/mob and taking the damage in their stead.
Now for option a) we have Guardian Fighter that can use KV and mitigate the damage the group takes by 50%, awesome! We also have Paladin who can mitigate damage taken with auras, sanctuary and dailies from 50% mitigation to 100%! That's amazing! Now Sentinel should have something too, being tank and all, yeah? Nope! All the Sentinel GWF has is Sentinel tier 3 feat Living Wall which reduces the damage his allies take from 5% to 10%... Not very cool, huh... But maybe GWF is so great at option b) that there's no need for option a)? Nope!
Since the temporary hitpoint revamp GWF can get slightly more hitpoints and they no longer disappear after unstoppable ends. Sounds pretty cool, huh? But... the bonus temporary hitpoints you get is based purely on your multiplicative damage bonuses. Now Sentinel has power for damage bonus, hidden daggers for 40%, Wrathful determination for up to 25% more and that's pretty much it for single combat. Now let's see the dps tree Destroyer: power bonus, 40% from hidden daggers, 25% from wrathful determination, 46.5% from destroyer and 50% from capstone... So yep, Destroyer gains more temp hitpoints. But Sentinel can mitigate moar damage with Unstoppable right, riiight? That's true, however, you don't gain determination from taking hits as long as you have temporary hitpoints remaining and Destroyer gains determination simply from attacking. Which sums up to Destroyer having much higher Unstoppable uptime than Sentinel. Which means the damage dealing tree Destroyer is tankier than tanking tree Sentinel? WHAAT!?
"B-but Sentinel has that awesome tier 5 feat which increases AC and deflection for slotting Weapon Master feature and also capstone improve defense rating and Restoring Strike heals 50% more!" you'll say. Now let's see what that equals to. 5 AC means additional 2.5% DR which is nice, capstone adds +20% defense effectiveness, so if you have 10k def it's additional 5% DR. Pretty cool. You also get up to 12% deflection chance too. Sweet. But wait... Destroyer can simply equip Warrior's Courage which grants 20% additional DR when bellow 50% hp and 12% deflection chance when bellow 25% hitpoints and Bravery which adds 10% deflection chance. That's almost the same as Sentinel using feated Weapon Master and Bravery/Warrior's Courage! As for Restoring Strike healing 50% more... The healing you get is proportional to the damage you inflict. Since Destroyer deals more damage, he heals more.
That concludes that Sentinel and Destroyer have nearly the same level of tankyness. That's dps and tank trees for you. Not too shabby, huh? Moreover, Destroyer deals at the very least 50% more damage ignoring features used. In mod 4-5 Sentinel dealt damage using Intimidation feat, so maybe that's still viable? Nope! The damage was nerfed from 30% of power and all damage modifiers working to 150% weapon damage and not even ArPen working along with it. You'll be better off using at-wills.
Maybe it's just Destroyer that's broken and Sentinel is as tanky as the other tanks? Nope! GF has a shield which mitigates any damage taken by 80% which is another layer after DR mitigation takes place. Also has much higher DR from equipment/feats, powers. Paladin on the other hand can cap DR without moving a finger, has encounters that grant hundreds of thousands of temporary hitpoints, has encounter that absorbs all damage, has encounter that heals and dailies that absorb from 50% to 80% damage taken for 20-24s. So yeah, that's that.
Conclusion/TL;DR: Sentinel GWF is as tanky as Destroyer GWF but deals much lower damage. Sentinel is also far worse tank than any other in the history of MMOs. So please, do us all a favor and put Sentinel out of its misery. Delete this feat tree.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
I'm really interested in where this going as far as discussion goes, since you have clearly done your research on this class and the trees man.
I agree, they need to fix the GWF trees that are lacking and bring them in line with the superior one and it is true, most all the other classes fall into this same category with the exception being Paladins right now.
-Kymos
I'm afraid Paladin suffers the same fate. Their Justice tree trumphs over the other 2. It's better for tanking, healing and damage dealing due to the cooldown reductions, resets, divine call charge gains and increased damage.
GWF has the weakest "Raw" damage of all the classes too. I know that every class has their power spikes at a certain level, however the GWF has to do about 2 times as much damage to kill a PvE creature than a GF or OP(shouldn't have to say anything about this class, op = Over Powered). I've started in beta and took a break til about a month ago, also I've played all the classes to at least level 10. I know that the Devs are "TRYING" to balance this game and build up on PvP, but is it really fair when it's a numbers game?
The OP follows the standard Cryptic pattern so far -- introduce a new class, make it ridiculously overpowered, then take him down to near complete irrelevance with the nerfhammer (I'm looking at you, Scourge Warlock).
The only few sentinels I've met in pvp were really weak. Zero damage and survivability bellow that of a Destroyer. One rotationed them and went on. Thus, I'm afraid what you saw weren't Sentinels at all.
Destroyer has better survivability in PvP due to higher Temp HP and way longer Unstoppable uptime and obviously much higher damage. And saying that Sentinel should not be using unstoppable is just wrong. Unstoppable is not just some bonus hp and DR, but a reliable CC breaker that also speeds up at-wills which helps dps too. Not using Unstoppable is like not using stealth on TR.
I don't think your lvl 27 GWF is enough either. At lvl 50-55 is where the game changes completely. That's when players get their tier 5 paragon feats and capstones. When Destroyer GWF gets Focused Destroyer and Destroyer's Purpose a Sentinel GWF gets Master at Arms and Sentinel's Aegis. Comparing them will give you the basic understanding why I opened this thread.
No, I'm not. Sentinel has 2.5% more DR and 12% more deflect from tier 5 feat, for which you need to slot Weapon Master feature. Destroyer on the other hand, can slot Warrior's Courage and beat that defense-wise. Additionally, Sentinel has 20% more effective defense from capstone. So if you have 10k def, you get +5% DR from the feat. As for the restoring strike bonus, it's nonsense. The heal depends on the damage the restoring strike inflicts, and since Destroyer deals at the very least 50% more damage... well, do the math.
However, the main point is that Destroyer gets determination from attacks. The more damage he deals, the more determination he gains. A good AoE crit can fill Destroyer's determination bar instantly. Whereas Sentinel only gains determination from taking damage. And even that is not always possible as damage to temp HP does not give you determination.
Another thing I keep repeating is that temp hp from unstoppable gets increased depending on damage bonuses you have on the char. Destroyer can easily get double the temp HP Sentinel does and a lot more often as I explained on previous paragraph.
But yeah, I agree that determination is an issue. On the other hand, I think a good fix would be to make Sentinel gain determination by dealing threat -- that may fix the situation.
Since basically nothing can 1 shot you when wearing lvl 70 gears and temporary hitpoints do not factor in, the conditions are easily achievable for a Destroyer GWF. +25% DR when bellow 50% hp is simply amazing, and the +15% deflect when bellow 25% hp can be a real life-saver sometimes. That by far is the best defensive feature for GWF. And no, PvP GWFs are not using 2 offensive features at the same time. If they are, well, I don't mind getting ez kills. Destroyer/Weapon Master and Bravery/Warrior's Courage is what PvP Destroyers are using most of the time. Ofc, talking from Iron Vanguard perspective. For example, Steel Defense can be an amazing defensive feature for Swordmaster GWFs.
And I don't know what should be done with Sentinel to make it viable again. Me and a lot of other players have warned devs over and over again what will happen with Sentinel in mod 6 when they overnerfed Intimidation and boosted threat generation without addressing any of the survivability holes that opened up with Regeneration and Lifesteal changes.