*** Sentry (Dark Avengers) ***

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

OooOOoOo, a "What if?" topic. I love these like I loved the Marvel series.

Makes me nostalgic about:

What if the Silver Surfer possessed the Infinity Gauntlet?
What if the Punisher had killed Daredevil?
What if the Marvel Super Heroes had lost Atlantis Attacks?
What if the Fantastic Four had lost the trial of Galactus?
What if the Vision of the Avengers conquered the world?

Yes, Im slightly off topic....

This was(is?) a great series. I still own 3-4 of the ones you listed above.

Unknown

Sentry is nowhere as bad as people think, and will eventually make a comeback. Every one of his abilities are very powerful, they just need a better enabler.

NorthernPolarity

ark123 wrote:

Sentry is nowhere as bad as people think, and will eventually make a comeback. Every one of his abilities are very powerful, they just need a better enabler.

Sentry make a comeback in a land of 4*s? Pretty unlikely that that will happen.

Trisul

Well, Star-Lord heavily focuses on cooldown tiles. If we had some other cooldown-tile-enabler in the future (especially a passive, maybe something that allows tiles to count down twice; or a super cheap Venom-ish team stun), potentially both Star-Lord and Sentry could be indirectly buffed as a result.

GothicKratos

Trisul wrote:

Well, Star-Lord heavily focuses on cooldown tiles. If we had some other cooldown-tile-enabler in the future (especially a passive, maybe something that allows tiles to count down twice; or a super cheap Venom-ish team stun), potentially both Star-Lord and Sentry could be indirectly buffed as a result.

Starlord/Sentry/Hood next OP team confirmed.

dkffiv

Trisul wrote:

Well, Star-Lord heavily focuses on cooldown tiles. If we had some other cooldown-tile-enabler in the future (especially a passive, maybe something that allows tiles to count down twice; or a super cheap Venom-ish team stun), potentially both Star-Lord and Sentry could be indirectly buffed as a result.

Hood Black covers the CD tile, Gamora is sorta close to a team stun.

Trisul

Imagine a 4* character whose passive could be that all countdown tiles count twice per turn. That would strengthen all characters with beneficial countdown effects.

(btw, would that character immediately be too strong?)

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

Well, Star-Lord heavily focuses on cooldown tiles. If we had some other cooldown-tile-enabler in the future (especially a passive, maybe something that allows tiles to count down twice; or a super cheap Venom-ish team stun), potentially both Star-Lord and Sentry could be indirectly buffed as a result.

Any team like that would have the huge problem of having to play Starlord.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

OooOOoOo, a "What if?" topic. I love these like I loved the Marvel series.

Makes me nostalgic about:

What if the Silver Surfer possessed the Infinity Gauntlet? Will have to look this up.
What if the Punisher had killed Daredevil? Decent
What if the Marvel Super Heroes had lost Atlantis Attacks? No
What if the Fantastic Four had lost the trial of Galactus? Ok
What if the Vision of the Avengers conquered the world?

Yes, Im slightly off topic....

Miss the what if's also.

Spoit

ark123 wrote:

Sentry is nowhere as bad as people think, and will eventually make a comeback. Every one of his abilities are very powerful, they just need a better enabler.

Nah, his green was drastically overnerfed, and while his red and yellow are serviceable, BP is almost strictly better at both of them

Trisul wrote:

Imagine a 4* character whose passive could be that all countdown tiles count twice per turn. That would strengthen all characters with beneficial countdown effects.

(btw, would that character immediately be too strong?)

Way too strong. A 4* that had intimidation with 2 turns might be okay though. Or an actually useful secondary effect. And also, think about how terrible that character would be to fight in pve, where they'd invariably pair him with like maggia muscles or lieutenants

Trisul

Spoit wrote:

And also, think about how terrible that character would be to fight in pve, where they'd invariably pair him with like maggia muscles or lieutenants

Oh God, I hope the devs aren't reading this. I'd like to strike this from the forums. [strike]Curses, this doesn't work.[/strike]

john1620b

With the upcoming Sentry rewards offering the change to respec, I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build. I want to keep the 5 red covers, so just looking at Sentry bombing by himself, you get:

3 / 5 : (156+571) x 8 = 5,816
4 / 4 : (165+442) x 12 = 7,284
5 / 3 : (182+363) x 16 = 8,720

5 green also has the added benefit of being able to use other Strike tiles, so I'll probably stick with that for now. I understand going with 5 yellow, as I never use his green (or him, really) and the strong Strike tile can be nice with other character combination. However, he seems more useful *overall* with the chance to have a useful green, whereas if you cap it at 3 covers, it's really a non-ability.

That being said, I don't fault people for going with any other build. He's unfortunately pretty mediocre at this point.

Unknown

john1620b wrote:

With the upcoming Sentry rewards offering the change to respec, I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build. I want to keep the 5 red covers, so just looking at Sentry bombing by himself, you get:

3 / 5 : (156+571) x 8 = 5,816
4 / 4 : (165+442) x 12 = 7,284
5 / 3 : (182+363) x 16 = 8,720

5 green also has the added benefit of being able to use other Strike tiles, so I'll probably stick with that for now. I understand going with 5 yellow, as I never use his green (or him, really) and the strong Strike tile can be nice with other character combination. However, he seems more useful *overall* with the chance to have a useful green, whereas if you cap it at 3 covers, it's really a non-ability.

That being said, I don't fault people for going with any other build. He's unfortunately pretty mediocre at this point.

If you're moving on from 5/3/5 you'll regret it. I say this having extensive experience with both builds post nerf.

You can have a huge nuke with cascades for that giant strike tile or you can have one of the worst greens you can get on a 3*.

Arondite

ark123 wrote:

john1620b wrote:

With the upcoming Sentry rewards offering the change to respec, I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build. I want to keep the 5 red covers, so just looking at Sentry bombing by himself, you get:

3 / 5 : (156+571) x 8 = 5,816
4 / 4 : (165+442) x 12 = 7,284
5 / 3 : (182+363) x 16 = 8,720

5 green also has the added benefit of being able to use other Strike tiles, so I'll probably stick with that for now. I understand going with 5 yellow, as I never use his green (or him, really) and the strong Strike tile can be nice with other character combination. However, he seems more useful *overall* with the chance to have a useful green, whereas if you cap it at 3 covers, it's really a non-ability.

That being said, I don't fault people for going with any other build. He's unfortunately pretty mediocre at this point.

If you're moving on from 5/3/5 you'll regret it. I say this having extensive experience with both builds post nerf.

You can have a huge nuke with cascades for that giant strike tile or you can have one of the worst greens you can get on a 3*.

5/3/5 is what I'll probably aim for on mine, but if he falls on 5/5/3 I won't be angry / in a huge hurry to respec.

simonsez

john1620b wrote:

I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build

The problems with your calculations is that you assume that at 5 green you will get 16 out to begin with, you don't factor in how many will survive the countdown, and you don't factor in the probability that the strike tile survives. Once you make estimates on all of these parameters, 2 things will be clear: the difference between the builds is not all that significant; Sentry is completely useless now.

Phaserhawk

yeah, I had 3/5/5 which was terrible post nerf. respeced to 5/5/3 since I got 2 red, love the red, hate green, yellow too weak, so now I'm going to respec to 5/3/5, at least when he's running with XF and Thor those yellow strike tiles will be scary as a defensive deterrant.

john1620b

simonsez wrote:

john1620b wrote:

I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build

The problems with your calculations is that you assume that at 5 green you will get 16 out to begin with, you don't factor in how many will survive the countdown

That's true, but I disagree that it matters. No matter which green build you use, you're going to lose some countdown tiles, and there's a higher likelihood that more will survive with 5 green covers. So it will almost certainly be more damage than 3 green covers -- if you're just looking at him by himself.

Of course, at 3 green covers you're probably not using the ability at all, so it's probably a moo point. Even at 5 covers, I've only used his green a handful of times since he was nerfed, so I agree that it's not a particularly good ability at this point.

Unknown

I actually had the Gauntlet try to sentry bomb me a couple days ago. AI even got an intimidation in! Luckily by that point I had stored up enough AP to kill Sentry, Hood and whoever else was on that node 2 turns afterwards before the bomb went off, and getting hit by the sacrifice tile a couple turns wasn't too damaging. Sentry's just too slow and weak now. Only good part about this is that it will be easier to pick up more of his covers in the Web-slinger PVP.

Phaserhawk

john1620b wrote:

simonsez wrote:

john1620b wrote:

I decided to do a few calculations to figure out if I want to change my 5/5/3 build

The problems with your calculations is that you assume that at 5 green you will get 16 out to begin with, you don't factor in how many will survive the countdown

That's true, but I disagree that it matters. No matter which green build you use, you're going to lose some countdown tiles, and there's a higher likelihood that more will survive with 5 green covers. So it will almost certainly be more damage than 3 green covers -- if you're just looking at him by himself.

Of course, at 3 green covers you're probably not using the ability at all, so it's probably a moo point. Even at 5 covers, I've only used his green a handful of times since he was nerfed, so I agree that it's not a particularly good ability at this point.

Assuming each side matches 4 tiles per turn. After 3 turns, assuming each build got all their tiles out

5/3/5--5 tiles left = (156+571)*5=3635
5/4/4--8 tiles left = (165+442) *8=4856
5/5/3--11 tiles left = (182+363) *11=5995

The end result is the same, but the numbers are closer. Assuming 5 red is the way to go, you will always do more damage with the 5/5/3 build World Rupture Combo because you would always have more tiles in theory. However, the odds of you actually getting World Rupture to go off now is small. So ask yourself this question,

What is the probability that World Rupture resolves or is useful? Face it Sentry is worthless outside of his PvP. You don't want to bring him in to PvE because he's too slow and does too much team damage. So the best optimization for him in PvP currently is 5/3/5 because you just aren't going to use World Rupture over X-Force so may as well get the most out of Sacrifice and Supernova. The only reason not to respec him from say a 5/5/3 is for the hopes that they rebalance Sentry to playable and that they favor a 5/5/3 build.

simonsez

john1620b wrote:

So it will almost certainly be more damage than 3 green covers

I never said 3 would do more damage. What I said was that you're overstating the difference. And upon further reflection, you're also not factoring in the self-damage, which is higher for 5 Green. Factoring in these parameters shows the difference is minimal, and the net expected damage is so awful, you'd never want to use it.