*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

It's just my luck that as soon as I get some spiderman covers he gets nerfed. Then I get enough covers to make cmags playable he gets nerfed. Now I'm coming up to a decent cover amount for sentry he'll probably be nerfed. An I destined to never experienced what it feels like to play a fully OP character?

Unknown

Um. Okay, really to clarify, I should have simply asked "Have people had much luck sentry-bombing at lower levels?" or something. I don't actually plan on using it, but I know that at some point the game will make me (like a Sentry PvP). See, I don't *like* Sentry. I don't like Daken. I don't like characters that self-damage, for the very silly and personal reason that self-harm in my past has given me an aversion to it. So my Sentry sits at level 107 (4-5-4) and my Daken at 107 also (5-5-3) because I am slowly levelling everyone up but I can't bring myself to play them unless it's compulsory. I just feel a little ick when I use them. Hulk heads into that territory too, I suppose. Yeah, I know it's stupid.

I appreciate all your answers, and I didn't see anyone as being dickish.

MarcusGraves

onimus wrote:

I don't know why D3 is just ignoring such an obvious glaring problem.

D3 is slow as molasses when it comes to changing ANYTHING about characters. I remember back when they first said that 3* magneto was going to be changed because of his obvious abuse, wanna guess how long it took for it to finally happen? oh like 3-4 months maybe longer.

that is the one glaring thing D3 does that annoys the hell out of me to no end, how long it takes for them to nerf/buff characters especially ones that need just a simple little fix to make them quality characters like 2* cap just getting little more damage on the red, moonstone's black getting a cost reduction or IM40 getting that wonderful suggestion i've seen floating around about making recharge have a stronger effect the more yellow you have built up.

stuff like that is just unacceptable to me.

eidehua

MarcusGraves wrote:

D3 is slow as molasses when it comes to changing ANYTHING about characters. I remember back when they first said that 3* magneto was going to be changed because of his obvious abuse, wanna guess how long it took for it to finally happen? oh like 3-4 months maybe longer.

How bout 8 months?

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2079

dr tinykittylove

dearbluey wrote:

Um. Okay, really to clarify, I should have simply asked "Have people had much luck sentry-bombing at lower levels?" or something. I don't actually plan on using it, but I know that at some point the game will make me (like a Sentry PvP). See, I don't *like* Sentry. I don't like Daken. I don't like characters that self-damage, for the very silly and personal reason that self-harm in my past has given me an aversion to it. So my Sentry sits at level 107 (4-5-4) and my Daken at 107 also (5-5-3) because I am slowly levelling everyone up but I can't bring myself to play them unless it's compulsory. I just feel a little ick when I use them. Hulk heads into that territory too, I suppose. Yeah, I know it's stupid.

I appreciate all your answers, and I didn't see anyone as being dickish.

I hate self damage too. Also too lazy to boost. I didn't sentry bomb a single time in the sentry pvp and still placed ok - enough to get two deadpool covers. My sentry is L95 with 5/4/4 - I only levelled him enough to tank for my real teams. Would have left him as a pretend 2* Bag Sentry, but I needed to save health packs and you can't use all loaner teams.

And even if you're feeling competitive and want to go for 1k+ scores, I do run into some non-sentry teams with those scores at the edge of how high I'm willing to climb. Better to ask how they do it.

Unknown

dearbluey wrote:

Um. Okay, really to clarify, I should have simply asked "Have people had much luck sentry-bombing at lower levels?" or something. I don't actually plan on using it, but I know that at some point the game will make me (like a Sentry PvP). See, I don't *like* Sentry. I don't like Daken. I don't like characters that self-damage, for the very silly and personal reason that self-harm in my past has given me an aversion to it. So my Sentry sits at level 107 (4-5-4) and my Daken at 107 also (5-5-3) because I am slowly levelling everyone up but I can't bring myself to play them unless it's compulsory. I just feel a little ick when I use them. Hulk heads into that territory too, I suppose. Yeah, I know it's stupid.

I appreciate all your answers, and I didn't see anyone as being dickish.

I have a 2/5/5 sentry at level 133 and I am taking on 270 xforce and 166 sentry / daken while shield hopping and I win 9 out of 10 times .. but I avoid anyone with a maxed hood .. I dont want my AP stolen .. I use boosts and Lthor along with sentry .. if anyone is left with health I just use thor's red to finish off the match

Unknown

My numbers might be too high, but it's because you bleed so much health with Sentry that even if you put out high damage, the damage you take might still not be worth it. Plus, Sentry bombing regardless of level is pretty dangerous. Even fully boosted and at max levels, I've had boards where the opponent stole my ap and cast WR before me. About every two or three hops, I'll lose a match. (And just imagine what a juicy target a level 120 Sentry is whereas someone might skip a maxed out Hulk or Laken.) But the calculation remains the same so adjust to whatever works for you.

Also, sorry didn't mean to imply anyone was actually being dickish haha! Someone had just posted something like "here's my serious, dickish answer" so I was just playing off that.

loroku

I'm not a top-end player. But there may be some relatively quick solutions to nerfing Sentry that could at least make him not 100% required for end-game play, and hopefully the devs wouldn't have to change anything drastic or spend excessive time testing. Here are my suggestions; please feel free to correct / counter with your own.

Simplest changes:
- change World Rupture to black (not sure why it wasn't black anyway)
- change cost to 10 AP
- reinstate original animation time

This would nullify his ability to combo so well with Hood (both need black), slightly reduce his effectiveness with Daken (since green can't power Daken's strike tiles AND WR), and make sure you couldn't buy his first WR with anything short of a 4-match black. The animation time would just help stop the crazy speed game. That might be enough to fix it, but I would also suggest:

- change original number of countdown tiles to 4 from 8 with max 12 at level 5; increase damage done (to enemies and allies) by 15%

This would keep the base power level nearly the same, but remove part of the massive multiplier threat that is Sentry. This would reduce the max damage from 16 * (174 + 674) = 13568 to all enemies (assuming max green and yellow) to 12 * (200 + 674) = 10488 to all enemies. That is still HUGE and still a massive combo, but combined with the increased AP and change to black, I wonder if that would be enough to at least make things better. It would put Hulk and maybe a few other heroes out of 100% kill range, and definitely increase time-to-kill.

Enough? Not enough?

Edit: It's worth noting that one green match by 5/X/X 3* Daken will take this combo back to 100% kill range; that gives 2 x 46 strike tiles for 92, which makes it 12 * (200 + 674 + 92) = 11592, still just north of Hulk's 11475 at 166. So it's still the best team in the game (Sentry + Daken), but now it takes at least 3 or 4 matches to get going (yellow, green, black, black - or potentially a 4-match black) instead of 2 (yellow + black). In that light I'm not sure if that's enough or if he needs more nerfing.

Pwuz_

Most of this has been said before...
http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17728

Though changing to Black is an interesting idea...not 100% sure it would do the trick on it's own, but in conjunction with other changes may be...well let's be honest, having it on Green is because it's a premier color, and Green WR keeps other characters from using their awesome Green abilities.

Changing WR to Black puts it in company with Rage of the Panther...and well, most other Black abilities are not considered top-tier abilities.

loroku

Sorry, forgot there was even a suggestion sub-forum, which is why I missed it. I'll post there.

To answer this specifically:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Though changing to Black is an interesting idea...not 100% sure it would do the trick on it's own, but in conjunction with other changes may be...well let's be honest, having it on Green is because it's a premier color, and Green WR keeps other characters from using their awesome Green abilities.

Nothing will work on its own. There is no 1 simple solution or it would have been done. So yeah, you have to think about several tweaks working together.

Green being a "premiere" color is incorrect for Sentry, though, because no one is using Sentry to kill everyone in 30 seconds with another green user. While that might be true in a meta sense, it doesn't matter in a practical sense. Especially when black is his main practical combo and green/black are how boosts are given out.

Unknown

dearbluey wrote:

Um. Okay, really to clarify, I should have simply asked "Have people had much luck sentry-bombing at lower levels?" or something. I don't actually plan on using it, but I know that at some point the game will make me (like a Sentry PvP). See, I don't *like* Sentry. I don't like Daken. I don't like characters that self-damage, for the very silly and personal reason that self-harm in my past has given me an aversion to it. So my Sentry sits at level 107 (4-5-4) and my Daken at 107 also (5-5-3) because I am slowly levelling everyone up but I can't bring myself to play them unless it's compulsory. I just feel a little ick when I use them. Hulk heads into that territory too, I suppose. Yeah, I know it's stupid.

I appreciate all your answers, and I didn't see anyone as being dickish.

I tried this a while back. Took a level 102 (2/3/3) Sentry into SImulator with Baken (still 5/5 then), and oBW (3/5/5) against a lvl270 Fury, lvl166 Punisher, and another lvl166 (forget who). I won relatively easily, which surprised me. Sentry bombing at that level is not without risk, but it is the most efficient way to punch through the 166 wall.

Unknown

The Comicon thread a couple weeks back mentioned the possibility of a Sentry nerf. However, Ice weighed in on the thread and said that some of the "announcements" were more speculation than actual announcements. However, he never came back and clarified which were authentic and which weren't.

I'm hoping they tone him down at the same time they make IW viable.

Kolence

Add a buff to one of the 2* that could use it (Cap, Moonstone, Bullseye) and it would mirror the previous round of buffs/nerfs :
X-Force/IW 4* buff,
cMags/Sentry 3* nerf (but a balanced one, not a Rags level one),
mHawkeye/???? 2* buff.

Guess I'm hoping too.

MarvelMan

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

seasong wrote:

mohio wrote:

He means something more like "can my 3/4/4 sentry soft maxed to 127 effectively sentry bomb?"

Well, he said fully covered so I assumed 355 sentry.

But regardless, my longer, non-dickish answer is that you should aim for >10k WR by doing this math:
(# of WR tiles created - 3 that you'll probably lose to matches)*(base WR tile dmg + sacrifice strike tile dmg)

I say 10k dmg because Sentry has 10k ish health, Hood has negligible health, and featured character has of course variable health but 12k seems to be good for them. If you use Hood's Intimidate after Sentry's Sacrifice, you'll knock down that extra 2k from the featured character while the 10k dmg from WR does everything else.

This is just for max efficiency Sentry bombing where WR kills everything in one go. Of course you can start even lower than that, but I personally would not Sentry bomb if WR was doing less than 8k dmg based on the above formula.

Why? Think about what you just said. Yeah, 8k isn't 10k. But that's still 8k AOE in the first handful of turns, and gathering 7AP to do it again is hardly impossible. Again, even at a relatively "low" level, nothing is faster.

The other thing not to forget is that you will still have your strike tiles up (assuming they werent cascaded) so any future moves will do crazy damage. I started bombing with an underleveled 3/4/4 and even if I didnt take everyone out (if there is a Hulk, burn him down first!) it was only a move or two after to finish. If I was more careful setting up the board I might even want only 4 in green to reduce self damage.

Phaserhawk

Black wouldn't do anything, what I learned from the last Sentry PvE, was you could run Sentry/Venom and get the same effect.

So if Sentry was Red/Black/Yellow. You would still boost, to get +6 black, +6 yellow, and with venom +6 purple. Then get your matches cast World Rupture finsih your turn, then next turn cast Sacrifice followed by Symbiote Snare, which obviously makes them skip a turn which then allows World Rupture to go off unhindered by them. You would have to run more health packs for awhile, but eventually you could get enough TU's of a level 5 Symbiote Snare, and again just boost your TU's and you can run this combo without Venom just like you could get enough level 5 intimidations to run the combo without Hood.

So while changing him to black would change things up abit, it would just evolve into the same thing with a different way of making them skip a turn or having WR go off 1 turn sooner.

This also works with 1* Widow as well. As well as the level 5 TU"s of Widow's Sting, Intimidation, and Symbiote Snare

Raffoon

So.... still wondering about this.

Spoit

Pwuz_ wrote:

Most of this has been said before...
http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17728

Though changing to Black is an interesting idea...not 100% sure it would do the trick on it's own, but in conjunction with other changes may be...well let's be honest, having it on Green is because it's a premier color, and Green WR keeps other characters from using their awesome Green abilities.

Changing WR to Black puts it in company with Rage of the Panther...and well, most other Black abilities are not considered top-tier abilities.

With SS, black is starting to become one of the premiere colors. Probably still not quite as good as green, but certainly better than and probably and

BillyBobJoe

I don't see a problem with this character. Comparing him to CMags who had two awesome abilities for 2 AP and 6 AP was downright unbalanced. Sentry is not unbalanced.
1) All his abilities either do, or potentially, give Sentry and his team +1K in damage. I've actually won against Sentry because he downed my team, and then cast Sacrifice, downing himself and giving me the win. Same with Supernova. He nukes both teams, I win.
2) His high health means that he takes the longest to regenerate health, so you need to spend health packs on him if you want to get back in the match faster. Fair enough.

So what 's left to complain about?
1) His Supernova ability? 11AP is a fair cost considering it does team damage as well. HT has a similar ability.
2) His World Rupture? This ability is mediocre without strike tiles. This ability is susceptible to many different characters who increase countdowns, destroy large blocks of the board (Thunderous Clap, Judgement, Pistol, etc) or changes CD special tiles (Settlement, Redwing). You don't even need the character on your team! Thanks, TUs, for that AntiGrav.
3)Sacrifice? Does self-damage and only creates one strike tile. Where's a level 3 Redwing when I need him? Done. Play Loki *gasp* and you have a defense tile worthy of Sue Storm. Also use any character that clears the board or special tiles that you used with the CD tiles.

Sentry by himself is easy to take down. What everyone is so riled up about is the synergy with either Daken or Hood. Playing against these characters is child's play. The AI doesn't know how to play tactics. Intimidation is set off before WR is played, Chemical Reaction eliminates that huge Sentry strike tile for you! What's the problem? You might as well nerf the Patch/Hulk combo then, or 2* Storm/Mags.

Oh...speed wins. Is that it? What's the problem? They're called BOOSTS for a reason. That's their sole purpose, to give an edge. When you run out you can purchase more. EVERYBODY takes advantage of this for different reasons. Why in the world do people cry foul when used for Sentry?

Sentry, in my humble opinion, is balanced, and therefore fair. I'd love to hear any support or dissension for this argument. Thanks for listening!

Nonce Equitaur 2

With Boosts, + Hood & Daken
Turn 1 -- green match.
Turn 2 -- World Rupture, yellow match.
Turn 3 -- Sacrifice, Black or Green match
Turn 4 -- 13152 damage done to entire enemy team.

If a maxed-out enemy Sentry gets a lucky cascade, it's pretty much game over. Worse than that, he makes the game fast and trivial to win on offense.

Magneto's two abilities were both very minor, and his blue/red weren't all that consequential on defense. His abilities could be spammed to force a win, but it wasn't fast.

Sandmaker

Out of curiosity, what is the highest you've ever scored in PvP?

I feel like perhaps you don't score high enough to actually understand the problem with Sentry. It's not about winning against Sentry. It's about competing against people who run sentry when shield hopping.

Currently no other team, even fully boosted, can finish a round in 4 turns. You might be able to beat Sentry fine with Loki or Falcon, but in the time it took you to do that single match, a Sentry player has finished 3 matches and reshielded. If that players in your bracket, good luck competing against him or her for first place.