Sentinel/Marauder overpowered since 1.2

[Dawginole]

My new char is a gunslinger and let me tell you this... I eat Sentinels. I know how they operate, I know when to pop my cooldowns against them and I know how to make them panic. I rarely get beaten by a Sentinel and when they start chopping me off, I toy with my cover to avoid their big hits... I am an extremely efficient Sentinel and do chop heads like it was nothing but my gunslingler can with ease duel most Sentinels/Marauders I encounter.

 

I feel that people are just crying because it's the cool thing to do these days. [/color]

 

 

See you said an important thing here that few PvP'ers pick up on. By playing a Sent, you know Sentinels. And therefore when playing a Smuggler you know your adversary. Few people know how their opposing classes work, and fewer consider which ones Sents are strong against and which ones will getcha. Why would you stand there beating a brick house tank for instance when you could burn down the mercenary next to him in 1.5 rotations? Just silliness.

[Toggles]

After carefully looking at the Expertise, Sentinel does get a pretty significant damage increase.

 

Now I'm no math genius so bare with me and try to understand where I'm going at.

 

Let's say our standard crits are in the 3.5K

 

3500 with expertise (in my case 24% damage increase) = 840 extra damage

 

Which means: 4340 damage

 

Now that's my average crit with the final strike of Master Strike. Expertise needs gently increase our damage, not significantly increase it. For example, if the expertise only boosted my damage by 15%...

 

3500x0.15=525 which I still consider a good damage increase.

 

4025 damage wouldn't be as bad and yet, still do great. In the end, to shutdown someone, 2 to 3 extra hits would be required.

 

Too bad expertise also adds defense so you're not actually getting that 24% damage increase unless it's against a 0 expertise player... which is a comparison that is downright silly and not worth mentioning.

 

A reddit post that seems somewhat relevant to that topic

[ekimmak]

Too bad expertise also adds defense so you're not actually getting that 24% damage increase unless it's against a 0 expertise player... which is a comparison that is downright silly and not worth mentioning.

 

A reddit post that seems somewhat relevant to that topic

 

As far as I can tell, there's a much bigger damage boost from expertise than healing/defence boost. So, only with a heal/tank combo of equal expertise matches it. And don't forget, the healing majority got a pretty nasty nerf lately.

[Darianth]

Yes. But that's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that really bad Sentinel players are doing ridiculous amount of damage not based on skill, but by their class being buffed.

 

By the way, just an update; my friend who I was referring to in my first post-he just got 2 more pieces of Battlemaster, and is breaking 800K damage on a regular basis in WZ's. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's not normal. He's a good player, but he's not a PvPer.

 

Damage is inconsequential in PvP objectives is all that's important. Sents/marauders and slingers/snipers are suppose to be the biggest damage dealers in the game hence the reason they are strictly dps. The problem with both is how squishy both classes are. Which is why slingers have 2 Ccs a knockback and 2 snares, and why sents have their 3 defensive CDs .

[Darianth]

If the Sent you're referring to is breaking 800k on a regular basis, then:

 

a) Your server is way overloaded with heals, most people are way under-geared, and no one understands how to use taunt

 

b) if that sent didn't break 800k before 1.2, he won't be doing that after. For all the cries of OP, we're 90% the same as the laughing stock that was us a month or so after release.

 

c) you're lying

 

And really, he can do so because of the buffs we got? Let me do some math for you. Considering this Sentinel's high damage output, I'll go ahead and say that the Sent is Watchman specced. I've seen Focus Sents start popping up more often after 1.2, but I've yet to see one consistently beat Watchman specced Sents, and for all the buffs Combat received, it's still a poor tree to go into.

 

Of the buffs Sentinels received, the only one benefiting Watchman was the universal 15% Masterstrike increase. Now, running a simple 5 minute parse on a dummy, Masterstrike applies to 12% of our damage. Therefore net increase in DPS will result to 1.8%.You can argue for the 30% dispatch, but that hardly increases final damage at all. Perhaps we can get 3 or 4 more dispatches off more than before.

 

Oh, and did I mention the spec 90% of Sentinels still use (Watchman) got nerfed in both utility and survival?

 

Saying that you don't know why, but even bad Sentinels are doing good damage after 1.2 doesn't make sense. It's certainly not happening on my server, and neither do the patch notes of 1.2 support that. Or are you a conspiracy theorist and think BW stealth-buffed Sentinels?

 

Um what buffs are you referring to in combat? The only one I see is master strike and yes it is a viable spec.

[Darianth]

To me 2 changes to the sentinel would go a long way.

 

Change 1 - increase the cooldown of force Camo from 45 seconds to 90 seconds

 

Change 2 - decrease the duration of guarded by the force from 5 seconds to 3 seconds

 

This would put the sents/maras oh s*** buttons cds more in line with other classes oh s*** cds because with the expertise changes 5 seconds is an eternity and an unfair advantage.

 

I'm a pvp vet from the best DAOC guild to glad in multiple seasons in wow and a sentinel in my hands is just deadly, and I'm sorry if you guys are to dense to see it, I was getting my 300k medal almost everygame in my mid 30s before even having merciless slash, I have a sent along with my 50 shadow and 47 shadow so I see things from a different perspective, me personally dont have to many problems with maras and sents because man they're are a lot of bad ones, but when I run into good ones who utilize they're defensive cds and keep a tight rotation well I can sill beat then on my balance shadow but it definitly takes work

 

 

Do NOT touch force camo. That is our only threat dump and lord knows we need it. If force camo got reduced we would pull off our tank soo much and cause soo many problems it isn't even funny.

[Zag_Stratos]

I love it when people bring in their entire MMO resume to weight a comment. Dude, you'll quickly find out that some people over here or even my guild we're getting paid to compete (they were that good). So let's leave the resume at home...

 

Anyway, my theory behind expertise is as I mentioned, a theory. I could be wrong and that's fine. My goal in life is not to learn statistics about a game. The buff we got in 1.2 does not justify the amazing damage increase. That is why I believe expertise might have something to do with it. At 600 expertise (1.1) I had 12% damage increase and around 10% defense increase. So ok, 1.2 buffed Master Strike, that still doesn't change much...

 

Nerfing force camo would be a great mistake in both PVE and PVP.

 

There's quite a few ways to shutdown a Sentinel. Learn them, use them.

[jbuschell]

I'm sorry but every class in this game is good when played by the right person, from my assesment of this game is this, there is just a crap ton of horrible players in this game, keyboard turners, clickers and just people who don't know what to do in a given situation, I play a scrapper scoundrel, balance shadow and a watchman sentinel, I cant even count how many times someone just sits there and eats a master strike, ever Heared of a stun or a knockback? Because every class has one, and it goes the same to all of the QQ of my favorite class the scoundrel from the scoundrel community from how weak it is, sorry but I wreck don't know what these people are talking, same with my friend who is a commando who puts up devastating numbers, sorry QQers you must not know how to utilize skills.

 

Just my 2 sents, see that pun haha, jk it was lame

[ShiningKnights]

no i will adapt and still kill people like the OP with no issue. I was playing this class back before we had ANY defense cooldowns. The class is not OP, it just like every other class kill bad players when played by a good player.

 

 

The op = bad player, so he will always lose to better players regardless of class, hes just butthurt cause some marauder roflstomped him.

 

not to mention the ONLY people claiming sents'maras are OP are BAD PLAYERS. Good players adapt and move on bad ones come to the forums QQing they got beat by someone better then them but they are too dumb to admit they were beat by someone better, so they cry the class is OP not that they are bad.

 

Don't even insult people when you're not even qualified to do it. If you haven't PvP'd at lvl 50 with both a sentinel and commando like I have and have War Hero on both toons, just stop before you make a bigger fool of yourself. if you want to respond, at least say something of value instead of stroking your epeen.

[GBlues]

WOW! WOW! WOW!

 

I never complained overly much about the PVP stuff and being underpowered or overpowered. I personally enjoyed the whole PVE thing and still do over the PVP. However....no body want to admit that they aren't good with there character, but....I am not good with my sentinel. Not yet. I'm working on it. What I have noticed is once you hit level 50 everything seems,(at least to me), to be way more evenly balanced. YOu start doing dailies and getting better mods for your gear, better armoring mods, etc, etc....and bang. Your up there with everyone else. I have never been a great PVP'er in MMO's. It's not the patch that makes you think that sucky players are kicking your butt. It's the fact that they may have learned there class better, or are now better geared. Period. I no longer feel Under Powered, but I don't feel overpowered. I am better geared now, and I have way more practice with my sent. When I lose, which is still considerable, I don't feel like I have just had my rear end handed to me on a silver platter. I had a smuggler in my guild for awhile. I stomped her, several times, and then had her do a few things differently, couldn't stop her she just mopped the floor with me, and still does, and to hear her say it, "Sentinels can't touch her!" It really is all in how you play. What gear you have, and how you have set your character up, and as more people play there Sents, and get better with them, and figure out what they need to do, those players that you thought just sucked! Are going to be way better. THe difference is night and day when a sent is properly geared. I think it is going to be pretty much the same with all of the classes. As you learn your class, and learn how to defeat the other character classes when they are properly geared, you are going to see people crying about classes being OP, and it's going to range from all over the spectrum. Today people are crying about the Sent, the shadow, tomorrow it will be the Guardian, and the Commando or the Smuggler/bounty hunter, then the Snipers! It's going to get sick and real fast! Cause people are learning and they are getting better! It's just awesome!

[Stealios]

As far as I can tell, there's a much bigger damage boost from expertise than healing/defence boost. So, only with a heal/tank combo of equal expertise matches it. And don't forget, the healing majority got a pretty nasty nerf lately.

 

The dmg reduction seems lower, but it's effectively reducing the dmg boost people get because it's calculated after the dmg increase.

 

So let's say i have 1268 expertise, it gives 23.65% dmg boost & 19.12 dmg reduction

 

If my attack does 1000 normal dmg now it will do 1236.5 dmg on a target with out reduction.

But if i hit someone who has the 19.12% dmg reduction 1236.5 x 0.8188 =1000.08

 

So dmg reduction while looking lower is just as it should be