**UPDATES TO ENLISTMENT GIFTING EVENT:**
To prevent exploitation, we will prevent new Accounts from being able to Gift enlistment crystals. We will also be taking action on those who are using 3rd Party Sellers, Bots and other farms to gift themselves mass amounts of Enlistment Crystals. Lastly, we will be adding an expiration timer to Enlistment Crystals. All unopened Enlistment Crystals will expire on Oct 18 @ 17:00 UTC. For more information, please see this post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/346104/updates-to-enlistment-gifting-event
To prevent exploitation, we will prevent new Accounts from being able to Gift enlistment crystals. We will also be taking action on those who are using 3rd Party Sellers, Bots and other farms to gift themselves mass amounts of Enlistment Crystals. Lastly, we will be adding an expiration timer to Enlistment Crystals. All unopened Enlistment Crystals will expire on Oct 18 @ 17:00 UTC. For more information, please see this post: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/346104/updates-to-enlistment-gifting-event
**KNOWN ISSUE**
We have adjusted the node placement of the new AW maps to better allow path traversal. As a result, defender placements have been reset. Please, take a moment to re-place your defender setup. We will be pushing out a message in-game shortly.
We have adjusted the node placement of the new AW maps to better allow path traversal. As a result, defender placements have been reset. Please, take a moment to re-place your defender setup. We will be pushing out a message in-game shortly.
Champion Spotlight - Sentry [Updated: Added 5-Star Stats]
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Who's there?
Sentry
Sentry who?
Sentry who will know your door down if you don't open up.
Bahahaha hahaha...nice try.
Never!!
I have added him to my questing team (primarily out of morbid curiosity) and have tried many different fighting styles, content levels, etc and he is useless. The fear of the Void synergy and fighting an Avenger helps, but OG Luke Cage was a better option.
I have tried every combination I can think of -- we probably all have -- but really, there doesn't appear to be much that can be done via any Synergies unless those 30 percent procs get adjusted.
The high-end damage that aligns every blue moon simply isn't going to be available with any kind of regularity unless those procs get adjusted, and it's just...it's just...man. There's just nothing that can be done with those procs at 30 percent
I actually have been doing a lot of testing, and for me:
- 4/55 Sentry is considerably outperformed by 4/40 champions in alliance war
- 4/55 Sentry cannot sustainably run map 5 and requires supplemental champions that end up doing all the heavy lifting. Map 6 is out of the question for a 5 star Sentry of any power level.
- 4/55 Sentry can survive long fights with infinite regen via the special 3, but the lack of damage guarantees these fights to last longer than my phone's battery and I will die as I attempt to plug it in
- 4/55 Sentry is not the worst quester in the game, and can reliably complete the master level quest (designed for 4 star 3/30 champions) but cannot reliably run through uncollected difficulty (designed for 5/50 champions)
- He is one good looking champion. Congrats to the art department at Kabam, one of the best efforts we've seen, shame on the team who designed his abilities and stats, a lazy and half baked effort.
I think by this point the team is aware and I do expect them to buff him soon
I can see he's on the low end. I'm not entirely sure a buff will come that quickly. New Champs aren't buffed so immediately. Barring some sort of bug, I don't see it happening for a while.
I'm just not personally offended by a Champ being on the low end. I'll still use him. As I said, there is a range of Champs. I have no idea of the design intention. It could be that they wanted him to be that low in output. It could also be as DNA suggested, and he was adjusted too greatly before release. No idea. The fact is, there's a process to revisiting Champs, and I don't see anything that indicates bypassing that process. Is it possible? Sure. It's possible they could have a change in the works. The feedback has been given to the team and they will discuss him. That's all we know. I don't see any sense in waiting with baited breath because the protocol and history shows that these things take time.
My breath is definitely being held and I am at risk of catastrophic failure very soon. The reason I think they may visit him sooner rather than later is that the process for updating champions has been sort of unofficially established as looking at OLDER champions due to their ineffectiveness not by design, but by changes in the game and content. For example, luke cage and red hulk both received updates because their abilities revolve around physical resistance and come from a time when that may have been useful. But the focus of the game on critical hits which ignore physical resistance have rendered them not very useful. So give them some damage, maybe some ability reduction, maybe some regeneration and buff their tanking ability a bit and they are both solid champions now.
Sentry however does not suffer the effect of multiple years of game development and has not been left behind over time. Sentry was designed in order to be ineffective. And if his design was not intentionally to be ineffective, he was poorly designed by. Either way, there seems to be a mistake made. Whereas red hulk and luke cage may have been useful at the time and have had their usefulness degraded by natural progression of the game, Sentry right out of the gate is useless. To me that is a huge difference. Also to compare with carnage, the team admitted the nerf to carnage, but we haven't heard anything about Sentry so Im reluctant to believe it is the same case yet.
Even hulkbuster at one point was a good defender due to the time limit of AW fights.
Back when I was a noob people used Luke in AQ. And even beat stuff with him. Back then there was no criteria for usefulness to be honest and even then (and now) they both had immunities which ultimately makes them somewhat useful no matter how you look at it. Sentry on the other hand, is designed (from what I can tell about the awakened 4/55 I've been playing around with), to be overpowering.. When you play around and manage to get his abilities to proc,(I've even seen it proc in succession - Overpowering Light, Steadfast Approach and Absolute Strength, in that order on a particular occasion. Guess my luck was off the charts at that point) you start getting the idea behind his mechanics. Except your luck has to be "off the charts" to see that overpowering mechanics.
To be honest, comparing him to Luke Cage and Red Hulk is not even close to fair. He has absolutely nothing. Not even an immunity.
Although his sig ability is fairly cool (if it procs), I'll say that much. I ate an SP3 in arena and went back to 99% health after the SP3 because I lost my combo.
I've said it before. I think his abilities have potential. They just don't activate at all. That % is just ridiculously low. It's not even much of a gamble. You're sure it won't proc (70% chance not to) most of the time and that's why he needs work.
When working with RNG and designing things that involve RNG its important to think about how often something WONT happen rather than how often it will. Sentry's abilities re-read with this philosophy are:
30% not to get fury on special 1
30% not to armor break on special 2
70% chance for no bonus damage on special 1
70% chance for no bonus damage on heavy attack
70% chance for no bonus damage on special 2
That’s just ridiculous! #buffsentry!!!!!!
To be honest, I personally see no difference between those statements and the character description. It is just math, and synonymous math statements mean the same thing to me. To be frank, if you're using intuition to guide your game design and the way the abilities are written down affects your judgment, you should stop using intuition altogether and only believe what the math says.
Game designers don't have a good track record here. If they did, DR would have been in the game on launch day. They wouldn't have been adding it in 12.0 to solve problems that were mathematically inevitable. Also, DR would make sense.
The point that I'm making is if there was a crucial flaw, it would have been resolved by now. Meaning, if the final outcome was far from the intended effect, i.e. a bug or a glitch, they would have resolved it. However, as it seems, he falls under the usual protocol for revisiting Champs. Which means it will take time. Take Carnage, for example. Despite the large amount of feedback, and the admission that they adjusted him too much before his release months after, he still hasn't been readjusted. It takes time, and it's not done after such little time unless there is a significant game-breaking or exploitable reason, or the release does not reflect the description. What we have is a Champ that performs as is described. Even if he's on the low end, it won't likely be soon. As with anything, they could buff him tomorrow, and I could be wrong. I don't see it happening for a while.
Its a good point that carnage has yet to be updated. The only thing I can add to that is that while carnage did receive a LOT of feedback, this post about Sentry is I believe more than triple the size so there may be a small chance that they prioritize it differently. Unfortunately though they do seem to take a very long time to re-balance champions. Their resources must be stretched very thin
They did say they were buffing carnage right?
That has been mentioned before but no firm timeline has been given. Last I remember is the first part of this year but you never know.
It's so frustrating to play him.
If you play him with a Crit team, his attack is too low and doesn't scale.
If you play him with an Attack team, his Crit rating is too low so he doesn't Crit enough.
If you play him with a Power Gain team so you can cycle through the states faster, he still doesn't proc enough.
He never procs enough.
Even when you play him with Void, the Attack boost from the L3 isn't enough to offset the fact that you are waiting to use an L3 in the first place without scaling damage.
He doesn't Stun. No Power Lock, Power Gain, Power Drain. No Damage Over Time. Fury doesn't stack.
Man. This character is so frustrating. I have played this game since Week 1, and for me, just my opinion, Sentry is absolutely the most frustrating release they have had
I like the art of his design so much that I can’t just ignore such a well designed champion in my roster so don’t force me to!
agree 100%, plus he does have a very good prestige and the animations etc is very nice is really bad i can't upgrade him
I did suggest gift basket bribery.
^^^Exactly this! I have made a team with ALL of his synergies, and still he is extremely frustrating to play. Simply a throw-away champ.
And even then, none of them listed above is as useless as Sentry, except Carnage of course. Phoenix gets some good damage as the fight progresses, Dance Dance Revolution Thor gets some monster shock after SP3, Green Goblin is a "****" in defense provided he's on the right node.
That been said, Carnage is straight up ugly though. I suppose Sentry makes a really nice avatar. Whoever designed his appearance nailed it - 10/10. I'd give his gameplay mechanics 6/10 but since he's useless 70% of the time, it's a solid 1/10.
Blade is offsetting the game way more than Scarlet Witch could.. Everybody is ranking blade. Everyone wants Blade.. So he's ridiculously OP. That's cool. I love my Blade as well. I'm not in the Nerf bandwagon.. Nah. What I would say the best way to solve this, is to introduce another super OP champ but wait wait wait.. Why wait another month or 2 for some weakling in the comics to come and break the game?? Use Sentry! Voila! Problem solved. Now everyone would want Blade. No blade? No biggie. I got Sentry.. Then two or three average champs, another super OP champ. Everyone is happy.
Shoot two birds with one bullet and call it day.