Sentinel Combat

Renek

So I've tried searching paste in for some logs and searched the forums for combat tips and stuff but generally everything is from 2016 or before. Can someone point me in the right direction for what the basic tactics are for Sentinels now with all current updates and stuff

@Rangor @Caelan I'm tagging the both of you because you have been the only two Sentinels I have seen in the game currently.

Links to past posts or logs of just basic combat would be wonderful. I plan on jumping in the game and asking as well. 

Lyrin

Looks like the old logs I'd put up have expired.

Here are a couple from today.   I've just come back from dormancy so am a bit rusty.

Petrify (affliction based instakill):

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/tULiPupx

Skullbash (limb prep based burst damage):

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/2cxiAwAC

Caelan

Lyrin has the right idea.

I still have it in my head that I should be going for axe-locks.  But the 'new' routes are PETRIFY and DISMEMBER.  
I personally love dismember because the message is awesome when you rip someone apart limb from limb.   But people seem to complain alot about Lyrin's petrify route so.. I'd give that a look over.

Renek

Caelan said:

Lyrin has the right idea.king

I still have it in my head that I should be going for axe-locks.  But the 'new' routes are PETRIFY and DISMEMBER.  
I personally love dismember because the message is awesome when you rip someone apart limb from limb.   But people seem to complain alot about Lyrin's petrify route so.. I'd give that a look over.

Yeah those two logs were awesome and definitely gave me some direction.  I feel like looking over those a lot of things have been gagged out and/or some things wernt working right (animal summons and enrages) @Lyrin. I still need to go through all the skills themselves and check some stuff out. @Caelan is the freeze/pound path still viable? And can we actually get a full lock? I heard somewhere we have access to impatience but wasn't sure of the setup

Caelan

Impatience is/has been in basilisk (GLARE) 
It is also given during the first hit of a DOUBLESTRIKE (skirmishing skill) 
You can still freeze/pound but I haven't gotten back into fighting enough to know the likelihood of success.  I'm guessing it is low since Magi have made most everyone prio freezing over most limb breaks.  But it is something I intend to work on.

@Atalkez I've noticed people doing it.. like I said, something I need to look into more.
@Renek also, we've always been able to lock.  

Atalkez

It's a terrible idea to prio freeze over breaks va Magi

Armali

That's a situational call. You don't want to be stuck prone forever but you don't want to be trivially standing pummeled/pre-hydrated/destroyed either. I've always found it good to prio burning/caloric while standing and then mending while prone and rely on tree and actives to try and delay executions a bit.

Atalkez

If you prio burning or caloric while standing you're going to be behind and unable to attack within three balances. Not a great suggestion either, already tried it and it did not help.

Coamenel

I've freeze/pounded Ainly a few times in spars, it's hard and requires a bit of luck on the RNG when curing kelp affs, I basically go for the truelock then finish with freeze/pound because the deathmessage is super cool.

I'd advice to master petrify first, then explore into skullbashing and dismember routes. Look me up in game if you want to chat!

Armali

Works for meeeeee. You just need to be able to hinder them back.

Lyrin

I think I'd just changed from Magi before those fights and had a few entourage triggers conflicting with each other.

I'll post a few more logs without gags once I fix things up a bit.

Renek

Alright so I have been working on my combat a lot recently and I have a couple questions regarding some of our skills.

1) Trumpet only works on undeaf people. Is there anyway to use this in conjunction with our other attacks. Say trumpet/doublestrike to break the legs while they are already prone. Or should I just be using trip. I've noticed a lot of times I try and use trip I end up getting parried and the whole combo gets thrown out the window because I have been trying to use trip after I break their legs.

2) I've recently switched to using clumsiness on my doublestrikes to help with some hindering. I know this won't be suitable for all classes and will likely have to switch to paralysis to change that. Is there any other sort of hindering in room that we have to stop people from running etc. I try and use noose traps but I've noticed with serpents and blademaster they tend to just evade away and I am stuck chasing them and having to restart my whole combat sequence again.

3) I also have noticed that sitting in the room with some classes I am at great risk of getting locked or dying to damage really quickly. Even with my SoA. Should I be running a lot more? I feel that if I do run I am only limited to out of room axe throwing and can never guarantee the hit because of parry or  dodge. If I have to run like that should I just strictly stick with skullbash kills or is it possible to get Extirpate while running a lot.

@Rangor @Caelan @Coamenel

Farrah

1) You're supposed to break the first leg with trip itself. If it gets parried, you didn't waste anything.

2) Paralysis is generally better hinder than clumsiness. Plus petrify can happen quickly so going for it asap (with paralysis) is itself a form of hinder. Noose traps are what you get. Blademaster evade is on a cooldown, so they can't lean on it all the time. Serpents you always have to chase. Though, as sentinel you can try to break legs while going for petrify. A single leg break stops evade.

3) No point in trying to out-of-room axe. You can go for petrify still though. Basically, you're always at risk when going for momentum. You need to maximize your own kill speed so you can beat whoever you're fighting to the kill. Some RNG will play a role too because of your ents passive attacks. You have to recognize when you're being outpaced and run then, but keep going if you're the one outpacing them. If you do it well, you'll definitely get some super perfect ent proc into petrify eventually. Sentinel petrify can happen really quickly.

Coamenel

Renek said:

Alright so I have been working on my combat a lot recently and I have a couple questions regarding some of our skills.

1) Trumpet only works on undeaf people. Is there anyway to use this in conjunction with our other attacks. Say trumpet/doublestrike to break the legs while they are already prone. Or should I just be using trip. I've noticed a lot of times I try and use trip I end up getting parried and the whole combo gets thrown out the window because I have been trying to use trip after I break their legs.

2) I've recently switched to using clumsiness on my doublestrikes to help with some hindering. I know this won't be suitable for all classes and will likely have to switch to paralysis to change that. Is there any other sort of hindering in room that we have to stop people from running etc. I try and use noose traps but I've noticed with serpents and blademaster they tend to just evade away and I am stuck chasing them and having to restart my whole combat sequence again.

3) I also have noticed that sitting in the room with some classes I am at great risk of getting locked or dying to damage really quickly. Even with my SoA. Should I be running a lot more? I feel that if I do run I am only limited to out of room axe throwing and can never guarantee the hit because of parry or  dodge. If I have to run like that should I just strictly stick with skullbash kills or is it possible to get Extirpate while running a lot.

1) You can enrage raven (undeaf/sensitivity) and trumpet in one attack. But I prefer to enrage with something else (like axe/dstrike) and -then- go for a trumpet. Trumpet is more profitable if your victim is confused (lemming passively gives that). I don't enrage/trumpet because that combo will cause you to lose one of your pets (can't summon after trumpet).

2) I always open with curare, it's -the- number one venom in my stack. Nothing hinders quite like it (except for SnB pallies I've heard? Not sure about that). If you're opposing a class that gets away all the time, you may wanna slow prep them. You can target limbs while petrifying. When they're set up, you have the option of skullbashing, skullbash into dismember or just stick with petrify. Depends on the person and situation though.

3) I never do LoS really, there's a trick to check if you hit them, but imo it's not worth the trouble.

Rangor

1) lyrin does a thing where he keeps deafness down on the target, waits for confusion from lemming to stick and then trumpets to avoid having to use trip on the leg break. I just trip. In team fights I sometimes enrage raven/trumpet for instant hinder.

2) since doublestrike gives impatience, clumsiness will generally be left uncured for longer than part which will hinder better. It won't be as effective in getting a quick petrified.

3) always have nooses set for defensive play. If you can't outpace the  opponent with doublestrike you have to slow prep and use nooses for defense.

Renek

To dismember I would need bound and impaled. Does that include transfix or does it have to be rattle/truss. So enrage butterly/trip to break leg prone, enrage butterfly/rattle to transfix knockout, then truss then impale then dismember? Seems like a lot of balance cost just to try and dismember. Or am I looking at that all wrong?

Rangor

That's basically it yes. The tricky part is that you need your target below 60% hp for the rattle to last long enough. So first you need to break legs and head for high damage skullbash, preferably with sensitivity.

Renek

Rangor said:

That's basically it yes. The tricky part is that you need your target below 60% hp for the rattle to last long enough. So first you need to break legs and head for high damage skullbash, preferably with sensitivity.

So really it would be enrage raven/doublestrike head curare, enrage raven/doublestrike leg curare, enrage butterfly/trip other leg, skullbash, enrage butterfly/rattle, truss, impale, dismember.

Can we enrage off skullbash, truss, or impale?

Farrah

You don't want to break limbs pre-trip generally. They'll just shield. I'm assuming the head break needs to stick for skullbash too, so it'd be more like trip leg, enrage/dstrike other leg, enrage/dstrike head, skullbash, etc. etc.

Rangor

I like to trip left leg, handaxe break head without enrage for max speed, handaxe break other leg, skullbash twice, ensnare/enrage bfly, then rattle.

Rangor

Dstrike is too slow for skullbash setups.

Rom

Setting up an out-of-room handaxe check is totally worth it and is situationally crazy OP.

You use the venoms count from weaponprobe to determine if the handaxe hit or not (if a venom comes off it was a successful hit, if the venom count doesn't change then it was parried/dodged/whatever.)

It took me like 30 minutes to make when I didn't know anything about coding, 100% worth the time. I put weaponprobe at the start of my los axe alias, counted the lines of poisons and then compared that number to a subsequent count, and gagged all the probing, it was even easy to work into my limb counter since the los throw line includes the limb.

Exelethril

Damn, now I feel like going Sentinel 

Lyrin

1)   I try to strip deafness in most of my fights for trumpet.   Our aff pressure from petrify is pretty high so most people will be eating goldenseal and bloodroot over hawthorn.    This means that a confusion tick at the right moment can lead to trumpet for a good 3-4 seconds of no-eq prone, and if you have your butterfly ready, transfix for an additional chunk of no-parry, no-hinder, no-running goodness.    Trumpet also knocks down undeaf flyers and flying is a commonly used method of avoiding traps.

1.5)   I tend to find that breaking an arm with an axe prior to the trip can be worthwhile.   Might be the artie axe talking (1.2 second throw) but most people don't react to the arm break before the trip hits.    You do risk trip hitting parry, but the extra 2.8 seconds of prone (4 seconds salve time - 1.2 seconds for the axe throw) can be worth it.   I think a forged axe with nimble and knife-thrower is 1.5-1.6 seconds, so difficult to react to.

2)   Since the change to clumsiness, I find that I lose a lot more affliction races against pure aff classes than I used to.    This is because clumsiness used to be a very effective momentum killer and this value benefited sentinels and other aff classes similarly.    With that aspect of clumsiness lessened, the other value it provides - stopping kelp from curing asthma/hypochondria/weariness is far more beneficial to other aff classes than it is to us (we require a limb break and bad choices by the opponent on top of a kelp stack to lock).     Since the change, I've found my self stacking affs under clumsiness a lot less frequently and just falling back on curare and limb prep.

3)   LOS axe is good fun and can frustrate an opponent who doesn't use a shield tattoo.   Another oft-overlooked option for defensive play is spinning which will gain you an easy 1-2 herb balance advantage on someone who does damage with their attacks.

Lyrin

Also I wrote this out then realized it was an answer to a question noone asked.   That said, it might be useful so:

4) Re limb breaking and dismember.   

 I'd suggest getting simple skullbash strategies working first.    Dismember adds complication and looks cool, but doesn't really widen your scope in enabling you to kill more people or kill the same sort of people with a wider array of limb prep paths.   If you've got someone low enough that they can only heal to <65% while you use ensnare/rattle you can often just damage them out with more skullbashes.

Generally, 2 head-broken skullbashes (at least one with sensitivity) will kill all but the tankiest of people (artied runewardens, dragons, kai heal, vigour, enhancement etc).   I've yet to find someone who 4 skullbashes will not kill.

I'd encourage you to find a way to use a combination of axe breaks and trip to achieve these break->skullbash patterns on your enemies - working on your ent management to maximize the number of times you can apply sensitivity while keeping your wolf ticking passively.

Great places to start are:

 arm->trip leg->head->skullbash->skullbash

 arm->trip leg->leg->skullbash->skullbash->skullbash

 trip leg -> head -> leg -> skullbash -> skullbash
 (trumpet->ensnare)->arm->leg->head->leg->skullbash->skullbash->skullbash->skullbash

As sentinels don't have a reliable parry bypass (except prone), you'll need to develop strategies for handling various parrying methods.   Static leg and static head are common and easily worked around by picking a different prep path.   More intelligent trailing and markov chain approaches take a bit more work.   This is where I find trumpet to be particularly useful in proning as it can ruin someone's day - where they have an almost broken leg that they think is securely parried only to be proned by trumpet and have the leg broken by a follow up 1.2 second axe throw.    Getting the enemy in the prepped, undeaf, confused state necessary for this ties together Sentinels' affliction and limb paths really nicely.

Our lack of parry bypass is offset by super fast prep time with axe (only slower than dwb, monk, 2h) and ability to pressure afflictions while prepping limbs.

Once you get the skullbash routes working well, you can then further blend the prep and affliction paths to deal with other parry strategies with arm->arm hard lock, leg->arm->arm rift lock and limb->limb->petrify routes.

Final note:  trip is stupid.   It's slow, doesn't deliver a venom and uses a completely different limb damage formula to your other attacks (every trip appears to do 1/6 limb hp, whereas axe and spear follow the standard weapon damage formula).   This leads to small hp ranges where your opponents will take 2 trips to break but an extra axe or spear strike will break them early.   Be prepared for trip-related frustrations.

Iakimen

Lyrin said:

Our lack of parry bypass is offset by super fast prep time with axe (only slower than dwb, monk, 2h) and ability to pressure afflictions while prepping limbs.

Slight disagreement here. In practice, artied Sentinel prep is frequently faster than any of these classes, particularly if you sometimes drop the enrage and just utilize sheer axe speed. This is because Sentinels have a better time against momentum-heavy classes in maintaining or quickly resuming their prep after playing defensively, and rely considerably less on prepping both legs (which somewhat alleviates the need for a reliable parry bypass, and shortens the prep path in many cases). The fact that their prep attack has a speed of 1.2-1.3s with superb limb damage is fantastic for counterplay options. It is just easier, if a person was so inclined, to delay a DWB's, Monk's, or 2h's prep path, as opposed to a Sentinel (though that is not to say Sentinel prep blows these other classes out of the water). 

In my opinion, there is only one other class that matches Sentinel prep speed in active combat, particularly against heavy hinder, and that is Druid. 

Farrah

Listening to Lyrin talk about sentinel makes me want to play it.

Rangor

Farrah said:

Listening to Lyrin talk about sentinel makes me want to play it.

Do it. Embrace the wilds. Find your animal friends. Take on the world.

Rangor

Iakimen said:

Lyrin said:

Our lack of parry bypass is offset by super fast prep time with axe (only slower than dwb, monk, 2h) and ability to pressure afflictions while prepping limbs.

Slight disagreement here. In practice, artied Sentinel prep is frequently faster than any of these classes, particularly if you sometimes drop the enrage and just utilize sheer axe speed. This is because Sentinels have a better time against momentum-heavy classes in maintaining or quickly resuming their prep after playing defensively, and rely considerably less on prepping both legs (which somewhat alleviates the need for a reliable parry bypass, and shortens the prep path in many cases). The fact that their prep attack has a speed of 1.2-1.3s with superb limb damage is fantastic for counterplay options. It is just easier, if a person was so inclined, to delay a DWB's, Monk's, or 2h's prep path, as opposed to a Sentinel (though that is not to say Sentinel prep blows these other classes out of the water). 

In my opinion, there is only one other class that matches Sentinel prep speed in active combat, particularly against heavy hinder, and that is Druid. 

My handaxe is sometimes so fast that I can't type out my next alias after prepping 4 handaxe throws and then changing attacks, before the 5th lands and breaks the limb. Curse queueing.