New sentinel help

Renek

Hello. First post here.  I've done some research through the forums on some basic stuff for Sentinels but I had a few questions and I just wanted to make sure my information was up to date because of how old some of the posts were.

1) what stats should I be looking for Sentinel?
 
I saw some posts about skullbash being % based damage that didn't scale of strength to well and that I should be focusing on +con more than anything. Is this true for PvP and hunting? Does our thrust scale off stats or weapon damage?

2) I am going to be tri trans eventually and I am Dec going to trans out survival. Those seem like the 4 major skill sets for basic combat. Should I work on weaponry next or is there another skill set that would benefit me better for hunting and pvp?

3) I plan on buying some artifacts but I am only going to have about 800cr to do so. Should I just buy the SpA and be done with it or are there other artifacts that would benefit me for for the price?

 I was maybe thinking a +con belt or even a sip ring or the % health and mana one but I was unsure the cost/benefit ratio for my credits.  Should I just look at getting the lol 1 spear and axe instead of the defensive argues since I plan on becoming heavily involved in PvP?

Any and all opinions would be helpful in making my decision. Thank you

Rom

1) I would go with constitution because it helps your survival immensely in hunting and pvp. Strength isn't a huge factor because Sentinels big finishers in Skullbash and Wrench are both entirely percentage based, then there's petrify which is an affliction-based instakill and benefits from strength none. Thrust however does in fact scale with both strength and weapon damage, but the marginal increase in hunting speed will never be better than not dying.

2) Weaponry to Throw is very good (you don't need TargetThrow, sentinels seem to have it built in). With Throw you will literally never miss a handaxe throw ever again. Besides that, Avoidance is also very good for both hunting and pvp because it gives you a flat physical damage reduction.

3) SoA is amazing, other incredible return on investment defensive items are health regeneration rings, con belt, bracelets (% mana/health), and health sip % rings. Ring of flying is also an amazing defensive artefact for PvP too, but it requires active knowledge to use well. Besides that, the first offensive artefact I'd ever buy as a Sentinel would be an Aldar Diadem for pvp, or an artie spear for hunting. Aldar diadem makes the summon EQ of your entities perfectly align with the throw balance of an unartied handaxe, so you can use entities with your handaxe much more fluidly, this also means that artie handaxes only show a speed benefit if you are not enraging your ents alongside throws. The artie spears don't scale too well, however artie handaxes scale insanely well but I wouldn't recommend them for new sentinels or even most veteran ones.

Notably I would also say that the Nimble major trait and the Knife Thrower minor trait are both mandatory. Knife Thrower makes you throw 10% faster and is often overlooked by people, the synergy with Sentinel is obvious.

Renek

Thanks @Rom. Don't think I will have enough for most of those. Maybe one or two of them depending on which ones I take. 

Renek

@Rom would a lvl 1 crit pendant be worth throwing into the mix?

Rom

Renek said:

@Rom would a lvl 1 crit pendant be worth throwing into the mix?

Crit pendant is fantastic and is by far the best hunting artefact in terms of making you hunt faster. However its effectiveness at low levels is weak, and it's value grows as your crit rate does. I'd say for hunting I'd still get an SoA first since it's multi-functional for pve/pvp and it truly owns. If you're wanting to spread your credits out more though then yeah a crit pendant is great and will pay for itself if you hunt for any reasonable amount of time, especially as a dragon.

EDIT: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sZGPdw9_ukFFTK_M1wT7RclOj-HbrBhLWDNJ2NVRfrg/pubhtml

Crit pendant spreadsheet, courtesy of work between I believe Ovid and Sena.

Renek

So I finally figured out how to get Extirpate properly. I have a general idea about skullbash (just need to work on my limb counting). Was wondering how viable a bleed kill would be (thinking lacerate to stick haemo into gouge/enrage badger/ get an impale off and wrench a few times) and what people's thoughts on the old freeze/pound setup too.  Are there anymore kill paths other than extirpate/skullbash/dismember/bleed/pound that people have found?

Taryius

You can truelock.. Though you won't pull that off on most people..

Coamenel

Taryius said:

You can truelock.. Though you won't pull that off on most people..

Truelocking requires a favour from RNGesus on their kelp curing. Any class that has a passive cure makes it even harder so is in most cases a route that shouldn't be your primary one.

Telinus

Truelocking can be completely avoided by eating bloodroot when you have slickness, only way I was ever able to lock someone.

Ryzeth

Truelocking can be completely avoided by killing the Sentinel before they complete it, since they probably take the longest to actually pull it off. (albeit still 'relatively' quick)