Templar vs. Sentinel PVP

Valain

Hi guys. New player here with a few questions.

I've done a reasonable amount of reading on the forums already, and I've found people saying in numerous places that affliction classes require a fair bit of automation to do well at here. Currently, I'm RPing a Templar, and while I could see myself potentially multiclassing or going Sentinel eventually, both seem to be based around afflictions - which is a playstyle I've enjoyed elsewhere. The thing is, the thrill I get from dynamically responding to stuff and entering my attacks one after another has always been my favorite part of PK. So while I will try to automate things in such a way that enough input is required from me to feel involved while still simultaneously feeling competitive, I had a question.

Which of the two classes would require or reward more potential player input in its affliction strategy? Is one of them more 1-2-3 - that's to say, necessarily linear - in its strategy than the other? Because that would help me get an idea of what direction I might want to try taking at first.

Thanks.

Illikaal

From what I understand, Templar is pretty linear in their affliction route and how they're going to kill you.

From the looks of things, there has been very little competent Sentinel PvP going on if any so I can't give you an accurate assessment on how strong the class actually is. However, Sentinel definitely has a much more diverse strategy than Templar does.

Templar PK is essentially spam doubelstrike over and over until you build up enough blade charge to to fire out the burst afflictions you need to finish them off.

Sentinels require (at higher tiers of play) full use of traps, crossbow, resins, your pets, and your Dhuriv. Sentinel does feel all around more versatile in terms of how you want to go about killing someone.

Valain

Really appreciate the response. If anyone else thinks they could give me more insight or another perspective, please do.

Thanks, everyone.

Seir

Templar and Sentinel are both viable and very comparable to one another. Sentinel has a few issues right now, but also has a few things going for it that make it a nice class to have overall.

However, to explain: Templar is an affliction class where, as Illidan said, you're ramping up afflictions in order to build up blade charge, then you can Vorpal. Think of Vorpal has an ability to hit someone with 3 affs in one combo once you've built up sufficient charge. Retribution is your endgoal, which is a conditional-based insta. A Templar can't really "lock", but they'll set someone back enough in order to hit them with Retribution if you're not careful about adjusting your affliction prios.

Sentinel has been called, rather appropriately, "the poor man's Templar". This isn't to say that Sentinel isn't viable, but Sentinel is very slow and its momentum is easily stopped. Static parry to head does wonders in limiting a Sentinel's momentum. There is daunt spam (if you have an eq crown) as a secondary option where you spam Daunt/Flourish to build up mental afflictions on a target, swapping animals as necessary and allowing that to build lobelia affs for the mana drain and blackout that comes from an opponent having agoraphobia/claustrophobia, build into into a lock, or an opportunity to throatcrush. If you set an opponent back enough to stick asthma and manage to throatcrush them, you've likely won. The hard part is sticking paresis enough to bypass the parry and actually tcrush them. My biggest complaint with Sentinel are the "cooldown" mechanics which just greatly hinder the class, in my opinion. Opportunity functions off of a 2 minute cooldown and speeds up your animals and the other cooldown greatly boosts your reload time with your wrist-mounted crossbow. Two minutes is a very long time in a fight and that can basically mean that you only get to use your high-end abilities once sometimes. Our "equiv" to Vorpal, in the sense of affliction burst, is basically on a cooldown.

Aside from that, Sentinel probably offers the best bashing on Spirit, is thematically cool, traps are useful in groups, backflip is by far the best escape ability in the game bar none, you can be ridiculously hard to deal with as a combat leader if you trigger nimbleness at the beginning of a group fight in conjunction with smokescreen being setting off, etc. The class is just really slow in 1v1 scenarios and easily hindered. It's in need of a good makeover that doesn't rely on cooldown mechanics and makes the class cohesive instead of a random pot of all kinds of abilities that don't really compliment one another. Resins, for example, are downright pointless in what they do. Example: we have a hypersomnia resin when we can't strip kola easily. The other resins are just... bad and there's literally no reason to use any of them outside of Glauxe when you can envenom your crossbow bolts.

Valain

Thanks for the info, Seir.

Tedrunai

Templars overpower you with brute speed and have great curing passives to keep them going. You lock them, they use their lockbreaker, you lock em again and accomplish your instakill before their breaker comes off cooldown.

Sentinels are more of a slow burn kinda thing, you have hinder out the wazoo so you stall their offense till you see an opening. Then you unload a bunch of long cooldown skills to lock them in a quick burst. The Sentinel lock is robust and immune to the traditional lockbreaker in fitness as destroyed throat bypasses it (and also doesn't get cured by focus unlike anorexia), so the idea is to stall until conditions line up for you to essentially "oneshot" them.

Templar's probably a stronger class overall as it can overrun anything eventually, Sentinel is susceptible to smart turtling and lockbreakers that can bypass destroyed throat like Syssin Shrugging. That said I don't think anyone's played Sentinel to its full potential (there's a LOT of room for optimizing the timing, and if you miss your window your skills can be on cooldown for 2 minutes so very punishing if you don't secure the kill) so it probably has some hidden potential.

Serrice

Do you have experience with combat in other IRE MUDs? If you played Achaea, I can probably offer some comparisons.

Seir

To piggyback off of @Serrice, Serrice has the most experience using Sentinel in recent memory at a high level of PvP, with most of my knowledge coming from her. The only other high-level PvP'er that uses Sentinel would either be Kheoss, who isn't entirely active (on the forums for that matter) and Vito, who is retired.

For Templar, you've got Dzekk, Eliadon, Serrice (again), and others. However, Templar's route is sorta static, so most know what to expect from one.

Kalak

If I did not choose Mage, I would definitely choose Sentinel. Because speaking from my experience with Imperian Outrider (basically much of the Achaean/Aetolian/Imperian eco-terrorist classes share similar schemes) Sentinel will be the more fun class even it might not be the "Deal-With-All" class like Templar. A good trapper can turn an area into a hellhole truly. Downside is...that you have to think more strategically then your opponents...

Satomi

Don't forget the crossbow. It's the only class that has a set of skills dedicated to ranged combat. I still maintain that the Amazon is my fav. class in Imperian (beside the Druid) so... there is that :P

Fezzix

Tedrunai said:

That said I don't think anyone's played Sentinel to its full potential (there's a LOT of room for optimizing the timing, and if you miss your window your skills can be on cooldown for 2 minutes so very punishing if you don't secure the kill) so it probably has some hidden potential.

I still don't think I've seen the changes to traps get utilized properly. I can't remember the name of the ability that causes a trap to fire while in room, but I can only imagine a proper dart or horseshoe triggered at the right time.

Satomi

@fezzix Entrapment. It's a passive ability, and seems to only trigger if they dodge an attack

It'd be cool if they could fire traps actively, instead of chance afflictions if your opponent has dodge up. (I would just turn dodge off at that rate, until I moved to a room that had no traps) but yeah..

Seir

Serrice and Draiman have both used the class extensively. Draiman has also said that if you're competing at a high level, it's better to use Templar than Sentinel because Sentinel's momentum is too easily stopped. Right now, Sentinel's best weapon is Daunt spam if you have an eq crown. Though I'd wager that said tactic was never intended.

Annabeth

Go templar, it is by far the stronger class

Valain

Annabeth said:

Go templar, it is by far the stronger class

If it's gonna be less dynamic and fun for me to play, though, I'd almost rather go with the other.

Anyway, thanks again @Seir - spoke to @Serrice in game a little, will do so more.

I'd be using a wider array of attacks in Dhuriv, right? And I guess things like Daunt, which I guess I might end up spamming - IDK if I'd need to choose between doing that and using Dhuriv attacks? Not really sure how all this works, but if I could manual my Dhuriv attacks and traps or something and automate poisons/beasts, that'd be neat.

What means does Sentinel have to track where their traps are, by the way? Are there any useful abilities to aid with that?

And thanks for all the responses, everyone. Meant to respond earlier, but I was being lazy about logging back into the forums. Sorry about that.

Emir

Just here to add a thing. Sentinel is probably one of the best classes in the game to deal the almighty and all powerful Teradrim.

The way it works out is that because Sentinel lacks any class curing beyond a lock breaker, they have ridiculous hinder in the form of balance and eq extenders and balance knocks. 

They're lack of curing is irrelevant vs. Limb classes because no one really has class curing that is "efficient" or overly useful, but they still retain all of their hinder. Add in the skill balancing to help nullify that dumbass golem passive prone and Sentinel is one of the best classes equipped to survive vs one of the scariest classes I have ever fought.