2019 Sentinel

Mizik

Don't see a lot of Sentinels, though I attribute this to the faction lock. I have a lot of classleads to sift through, but theory crafting is one of my favorite parts of this game and the youngest thread here is like 3 years old.

Top tier viable? Or is it that easy to avoid? Can I not fork Petrify to lock and vice versa? Does the pressure keep up?

Artefacts. What's the purchase order for offense? I suppose spear for momentum affs, handaxe for prep. Which has more impact? Are the lv1 weapons a wash?

Skullbash damage.. still % minus armor?

Rangor

@Telinus and @Lyrin are the ones currently playing with it.

Telinus

So I want to write a really long post outlining Sentinel, what I like, and what I dislike. I will do that if you want me to, and will provide my own reasoning behind the class, but simply put;

- Other classes do what sentinel does better, quicker, and with more reliability.

- Lock is a pipe dream outside of piss-poor curing priorities on your opponent and level 3 artefacts on your side.

- It's slow spear attacks, random parry bypass venom, lack of parry bypass for handaxe, no venom on trip and overall very average with RNG on most of its kill paths

- You will look back on fights going "Oh I almost had you there!" - literally  "If you only had 1% less health that would have been a dismember!" or "If I had lemming out you would have died!"

- Feels like they put it together with the intent on other classes becoming similar in play style, then went a completely different direction and left it lacking and feeling slow

- It's clunky and feels very disconnected overall between abilities, kill paths, and forking

-Requires your opponent to make mistakes

- it's stupidly broken in group scenarios, meaning any buffs to 1v1 make this worse

- It's reliant on artefacts or fighting unartied opponents.

Overall I love the class for its thematics and its fun mix of abilities, when it works it can seem so incredibly broken, but it feels clunky most of the time, and feels as if it doesn't really have its own thing. Other classes do more damage, Other classes do better limb damage, Other classes give a wider range of venoms, Other classes have an easier insta-kill path with more reliability, sentinel just seems to lack on all sides of it to a certain extent.

You would probably end up ignoring every path bar Wrench and maybe skullbash.

Animal management is horrible to deal with in a lot of respects.

You probably wont lock people, its sort of possible, but the stars have to align perfectly, and I think you HAVE to be artied for it to work (may be wrong here) or they have to have the worlds worst curing priorities and be AFK.

Artefacts I would say must-haves at a minimum to be viable in 1v1 are probably:

- Aldar diadem

- Level 1 spear

- Level 2 handaxe

Group you don't need any really.

It needs a bit of loving to make it more seemless and allow forking for kills, make it less clunky and I imagine a lot more people would wnat to pick it up, but as is - Sylvan is better overall, Druid is more reliable for less investment ( unless that's changed ) Most classes perform better in either one or two aspects over sentinel.

Overall, its fun, random, frustrating, a bit love-to-hate.

-- EDIT --

Please note, I have a lot more gripes, but also a lot more likes about the class - hit me up and we can have a discussion/spar so you can see it in action.

Mizik

I selectively read your post to much excitement. I see a lot of tools in the ab files, but don't really know how they're brought together. It's tougher to bring changes to classes without dedicated players, so maybe you can I can brainstorm together. Once I have a grasp we can try to figure out what it needs, even if it's QOL.

And feel free to rant or go into as much detail as you like! The more input the better!

Thanks!

Gror

You should definitely expand your post. People considering picking up the class will see it and so will the developers. And also those of us who read almost everything. 

Mizik

         spear63571 a mithril spear                                 5     800cr

                    Dmg: 101;  To-hit: 219;  Spd: 205

         spear67601 a spiked steel spear                            4     350cr

                    Dmg:  96;  To-hit: 215;  Spd: 200

         spear85072 a Stormspear                                    5    1600cr

                    Dmg: 106;  To-hit: 224;  Spd: 210

Do these speed stats scale differently with Skrimishing than weaponry attacks? Don't see it being worth 450cr to get 5 speed.

Telinus

Hopefully I will have more time today to write a post and give you an answer to the above. The spear speed scales differently I think, but will confirm later.

[Deleted User]

They do. Pretty sure it says in the help file (or it did anyway). Same with lupine/thoth where the speed on the weapon doesn't actually reflect the speed of the weapon, and is just ... there.

Each level of spear is somewhere around ~0.1s faster from memory. Maybe 0.15. I didn't bother past level 2 because it was more than capable of doing pretty much everything anyway. Difference between forged and L1 is not particularly stellar. Difference between forged and L2 is.

Mizik

Perfect, thanks! And I see that unartied axe lines up perfectly with summon. I don't see the draw to bumping that out of budget.

Rangor

Need faster axe for easy head damage skullbashes. Unless it's already been tweaked.

When going for petrify with diadem and lvl 2 axe, I usually switch to axe/summon for faster affs after impatence is stuck.

Mizik

I guess axe might shave a hit off a limb damage, which is fine, but there's no benefit to the speed unless you don't resummon, since they're the exact same.

Lyrin

Sentinel is my favourite class.   It's challenging and has several frustrating limitations but I always leave fights knowing there are things I could have done better rather than feeling the class has nothing more to give.  I think it just needs is a larger number of people learning and practicing to refine existing strategies and come up with new ones.

The hybrid aff/limb nature of the class means its kill sequences against non-terrible curing have very tight timing and few reliable answers to basic defensive strategies where the target leaves the room during a kill sequence (e.g fly, tumble when prone through ghands/piety/stonewall).

The addition of barge (not sure I got the name right) and several arties that interact with traps has further weakened Sentinels' already poor room hinder (in the context of 1v1).   Runewardens are able to fall back on isaz/engage with the hit to wunjo/nairat, but Sentinel is stuck with single use traps, freeze ground and blocking (if you want to fight in elephant and not use any jaguar or basilisk abilities).

Re Skullbash:

Speed and damage are not affected by weapon stats or strength.

Damage is based on max hp and is unblockable type.  Not affected by SoA and is only reduced by scales, algiz etc.
Proper skullbash strats will make use of raven for sensitivity

Off the top of my head, damage is:

 - no head break, no sensi:  ~37%

 - head break, no sensi: ~47%

 - head break + sensi: ~63%

Some thoughts on artefacts:

 - Key in picking your weapon speeds will be identifying what lets you get 3 hits (with enrages) in a single 4s resto window.   Depending on the situation, this will be some combination of doublestrike (break)/axe/axe, axe (break)/doublestrike/axe, axe (break)/doublestrike/gouge to get a venom lock or salve assisted petrify.

 - I'd suggest making sure your axe and spear are the same artefact level.  This will simplify your limb tracking as you can then assume the same damage for all attacks except for trip (which is just half the standard attack).

 - The change to trumpet making it use balance has removed a big advantage of diadem for sentinel, but there are several other class abilities where it's really nice.  Those that spring to mind are summon pet, basilisk gaze/glare, icewyrm freeze and I'm sure there are others which I've forgotten.

 - Artie spears mainly benefit aff stacking.  Damage of the standard spear attacks is negligible regardless of level and the big ticket abilities (skullbash, impale, wrench, drag) are all unaffected by weapon speed and weapon damage.

 - Axe is great for efficiently prepping limbs and getting started with your aff stack.   Stripping blind and deaf is important on people who don't just blindly eat bloodroot into petrify - and you can do this with axe/raven and axe/butterfly.   Axe's rebounding bypass is also valuable for keeping up aff and limb pressure when you know rebounding is about to come up and is almost always preferable to using rivestrike.   As Rangor mentioned, a faster axe will also open up more possibilities with limb+prone strats by allowing you to get in more attacks prior to resto applies resolving.

 - Tumbleweed and caltrop talismans are also good purchases as they allow for some absurd cheese when combined with traps.

Other general strategies:

I think most of the posts in this thread are still relevant:  https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/362182#Comment_362182

Main changes since it was written are:

 - trip limb damage has been simplified to be 1/2 of standard spear attacks

 - gouge now gives weariness instead of sensitivity

 - lemming now gives vertigo on tick instead of confusion.   Trumpet to prone still possible using basilisk gaze for confusion but requires stacking affs rather than waiting for lemming

 - spear attacks can now bypass parry with haemophilia stuck

Mizik

This was everything I needed. Thanks, man.

Mizik

Out of curiosity, how do you handle your summoning? I guess I can make sets for kill paths, then just base on affs, but I keep changing my mind or blanking when I actually get down to type.

Or hard lock one into passive (butterfly stupidity?) and have one on swap spam.

Can't see passives, right?

RIP expert diag in your logs. 

[Deleted User]

You can see when passives go off. The animals all have attack lines.

Lyrin

Re: pet summoning

As you suggested, choosing one as your passive then alternating the active pet is the simplest option.

Your passive options are pretty much Raven, Wolf and Lemming for petrify, damage and vertigo + on demand shield/rebound strip respectively.  Fox, badger and butterfly are pretty poor passive options - stupidity from butterfly would be amazing, but its tick rate is horrendously low due to how oppressive high stupidity uptime would be on top of Sentinel's other active affs.

The enrage choices are a bit more open to variation as more pets have useful effects.   Wolf/Butterfly for petrify, raven for damage, fox/badger for stacking covering affs are good starting points.

I can't claim to have found an optimal approach - I tend to rewrite my pet stuff about once a year and it's still horribly long and complicated as I try to achieve efficient shifting of passive and active choices as a fight bounces between pressuring aff volume, damage, petrify or preparing for a chain of specific combos.

Caelan

I dont understand why we can't just keep them all out like in the past.   Order 2 passively aggressive (or have them all passive since they time out different on attaks anyway - and then change petrify reqs or somethjng), and then have to resummon after enrage.  The restriction on 2, while occies get a bit more, along with great hindering where Sentinels have none had been frustrating as hell to me.

Mizik

I just don't have the coding know-how to properly summon/enrage and swap on the fly. 

I haven't thought about it, but maybe it wouldn't be bad to have all out, but set one to attack and enrage one at a time.

[Deleted User]

I mean classleads are open, y'all should be addressing this.

Make it so enrage doesn't dismiss the animal, and you can have them all out.

Add a separate thing to enable the ent's passive effect, allow only one enabled at a time. Setting it again will change which ent is 'active'

Functionally it wouldn't really change anything, although it might increase the likelihood of affs getting stacked, since they won't have to keep track of what ents are out vs what affs the target has. Would probably have to address it a bit.

Telinus

I was going to write a classlead for this but am currently away in France with no access to achaea, so not sure if I'll miss the window:


Essentially I was going to suggest same setup as it is now - 2 summoned for passive effects, enrage any animal even if not summoned - if you enrage an animal you have summoned its passive effect goes on a cooldown of a minimum of 5s + whatever the random tick rate is for it to proc again. To change an animal you would dismiss and summon the new one - so essentially changing a passive animal would be the same as enrage currently is but instead of enrage at the start of the attack you dismiss.

Would make sentinel much more fluid/easy to manage/more playable with less coding capability.

Definitely what I want to write and suggest but.. no access right now.

Mizik

That actually sounds pretty clean.

[Deleted User]

Mizik gonna climax when he sees Classlead 104 decision.

Rangor

Post it!! Sheesh. 

Accipiter

Report #104

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Submitted by: Anonymous      Status      : Approved

Skill       : Woodlore       Ability     : Enrage

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Problem:

Animal management is a nightmare with a steep coding knowledge entry level. We've balanced animal

limits around their passive effects and in this regard it's effective. However, some quality of life 

changes to enrage would make this fun class more accessible.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Solution #1:

Change Enrage to cast attacks not requiring physical ents. Summonable ent limit is lowered to one

for passive effects - keep current summoning mechanics for on fly passive effect swaps. Essential 

passive ent + enrage ent mechanics maintained with a much cleaner design that doesn't require a 

coding degree.

Solution #2:

Solution #3:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Decision:

I am not sure what was wrong with me when I made enrage, but I'm sure something must have been.

Solution 1

------------------------------------------------------------------

Telinus

That will make sentinel a bit easier to play, though I am sad my script will become obsolete.

Rangor

Telinus said:

That will make sentinel a bit easier to play, though I am sad my script will become obsolete.

It was a pretty script. We will build a museum for it.

Mizik

Mine breaks so easily.

Mizik

Round one:

Woodlore

--------

* LEMMING now targets shield before rebounding when ENRAGEd.

* The horrendous ENRAGE system has been reworked. You no longer need an animal summoned to ENRAGE

it. We may have to drop the animals you can have out at a time to one in light of this as it removes some of the tradeoffs, but we'll see how things pan out.

Rom

Did they increase the enrage cooldown or was this an absurd buff to artie handaxes? Artie handaxes were previously limited by EQ to resummon an ENT after each enrage, which you seem to not need to do anymore.

Edit: I was told the enrage CD is still long enough that you would only enrage every other handaxe throw with level 3. This is still a HUGE buff since you can enrage with no drawback now.

Mizik

Get yours today!

Mizik

You think it's that much better to 

enrage/axe, axe, enrage/axe at 1.25s vs
enrage/axe, enrage/axe at 1.4?

My aff output doesn't feel significantly impacted. This might change once I start employing outside the box lock attempts. Multiple limp prep was definitely sped up, obviously.