I've done some further testing on the Sentinel's effect using power armor and secret service armor. In the video, the strange number variations popped up with 4 or 5 pieces equipped. My assumption at the time was that this might be due to multiple pieces conflicting with each other. It doesn't seem like that's really what's going on. It seems to be related to how much damage you are resisting or avoiding (might be either or both). I started getting strange variations in damage with just 1 piece of power armor or 1 piece of secret service. Either one of these has much higher defense than the entire set of armor in the video. At this point, I'm going to just avoid using Sentinel's on any armor altogether for the time being.
My take is that the "bug" happens as often as the reduction happening. That is, whenever any Sentinel would activate (20% per piece, rolled before the effect activation) you have 75% chance of reducing the damage, otherwise it bugs out and you instead have damage calculated as your resistance was 0 :P This would explain why with less pieces it happens less.
Thankyou for this test info. I dropped sentinal when i started to notice large chunks of my health bar just vanishing. Suddely Scorch were one shotting me out of nowhere.
I noticed that with 1 piece of Sentinel on my power armor my bloodied character had wierd deaths. After removing the effect those haven't happened anymore, so something is definetely off.
When it works 75% of the time it’s fine and works as intended. From what I’ve read and what Vlad Armstrong discovered is that the 25% chance it doesn’t proc sentinels basically deletes all your damage resistances and that damage gets through as effectively”true damage”, hence the random and massive spikes seen in Vlad Armstrongs videos. For bloodied builds it’s actually pretty dangerous. You’ll be tanking just fine and then BAM you’re dead to a massive buggy hit.
I'm running full sentinels on my raid build PA and full health and when that damage spike hits it wipes me out. Not just dangerous for bloodied. Going to 3 pieces it appears.
The problem was never that the effect didn't proc or that it didn't reduce damage correctly, it has always been the rest of your defenses are entirely bypassed when it does not proc. When you're comparing with such low defenses you don't see much of that negative, but it really shows through when you're min-maxing your defense. If you repeat the same test but replace the 1* effect with Assassin's, you'd be seeing as low as just 1-2 damage when it does proc but you'd still be seeing 54-55 when it does not instead of the 8 you'd be expecting; you could go all the way up to full Assassin's Hellcat armor with all the defensive perks maxed out so those hits are only doing 0-1 damage, the moment you put on the Sentinel's effect you'll be taking the full 54-55 damage every time it fails to proc. The issue is well documented and dates back 5-6 years.
It’s probably gonna be said a lot but you’ve got to test it with power armor. Or maybe secret service armor or something with high armor values so we can see the massive difference in damage between it proc’ing and not proc’ing.
Ya it's safe to say between this video and angry turtle's video the higher you go up the DR chain the bigger difference you will see. I use it on a covert scout armor set and the difference is very small.
They noticed, there's a fix coming... at some time, but, they also changed a bit how it works. Maybe we're going to get it after the maintenance (rumor - we don't know when).
I run a PA build that is essentially a Tank. I have 3 pieces of Sentinel and 2 with Weapon Weight Red. I can tell you, I can Tank shot after shot with little effect, then all of a sudden I’ll take multiple shots that will consecutively take multiple HUGE chucks of HP. There is something wrong this it, but I just don’t know what.
Damage goes straight to your HP when the effect fails to proc, bypassing all other defense. It's an old problem that has been well documented for the past 5-6 years, but never got addressed.
@@Silversmith70 Kinda, but even anti-armor effects don't ignore the % resistances. A 100 damage shot with 100% armor penetration would still only do 70 damage through full Overeaters (or 25, through full Assassin's or similar), but if you also have Sentinel's and it fails to proc then you're eating all 100 damage.
Its power armor that is really noticeable. What happens is whe sentenals triggers it negates all other armor bonuses. So you end up taking more damage in power armor when sentenals triggers
Here's a thought... what if it's a SPECIFIC armor piece that's doing it? For example, maybe it only happens if you equip a chest piece or a left leg piece. If that hasnt been tested, it probably should be. I'm sure everyone has experienced the glitch when loading into a new world, sometimes your jetpack is bugged and you have to unequip and reequip the chest piece to fix it. Maybe that's the issue here. A certain piece is glitching out and perhaps it can be bypassed by simply not equipping that piece.
My speculation about what the (bugged) Sentinel behaviour is: The check for Sentinel is done globally, not per piece: There's an initial check that evaluates the chance of ANY Sentinel activating: 20% per piece with a Sentinel mod. IF it activates, 75% chance reduce damage ELSE you take damage like you had 0 resistance (bug). This would explain why with a full set you get those numbers, and with less pieces it scales down that "25% 0 resistances bug" from happening.
I wonder, do each of the pieces trigger independently or as one unit with stacking effects? Seems like it groups as one stacked effect based on these tests.
It's frustrating because it's obviously broken, and if it worked correctly, it would easily be the best third star for armour in terms of survivability/tank. Perhaps just in general.
Keep in mind that NPCs can crit, and a crit will ignore not only sentinel’s, but also overeater’s and the 42% damage reduction from a power armor frame itself. This will make the damage disparity MUCH larger between incoming hits and incoming criticals. I think this is the source of a fair amount of confusion. In my testing, 5/5 pieces works well, but not as well as expected.
I've got it equipped on all five pieces of my power armor and I noticed no benefit whatsoever to have it after switching to a set of power armor without it
3 pieces of sentinels & 2 pieces of cavaliers would be good for a daily driver & maybe bethesda will see this vid & help them fix the issue! Great vid & great testing thank you Wiggle!
I hoped I could look at a video where some fanboi wouldn't mention that turtle guy who gets all his information 2nd hand, sadly I was mistaken. This video was good however.
Or just with proper defenses in general. Power armor gets hit a bit harder because it has a base 42% damage reduction, but effects like Assassin's are also impacted and it even bypasses the armor rating (DR, ER, etc)
Nah mate, 5 pieces of Thru Hikers to spend those point elsewhere. I dont have any sentinel mod on my power armor and I can easily tank the whole raid. Like im not kidding, survivability is not even remotely an issue.
Im a little stupid, my answear is considering Power Armor. So if you do not run Power Armor dont take Thru-Hikers because you can get 90% weight reduction for either Chem or Food on the Backpack.
I'd recommend skipping out on Sentinel's at the very least, the problem he has trouble pinning down is that the damage is bypassing all other reductions when the effect does not proc. The tankier you try to build, the more Sentinel's is going to hurt. The problem has been well documented for the past 5-6 years and was never addressed. The effect works alright if they're the only thing you have for defense, but it's poison to properly tanky builds. Tanky builds are better off going for some other 3* like Thru-Hiker's (weight reduction) or Electrified (return damage). NOTE: Cavalier's might have the same problem that just hasn't been well-reported, it received the same changes as Sentinel's but was never very popular.
@@trailertrasher3881 well, that works aswell, but at that point I might consider getting 5 Arms Dealer or Ammo Carrier so that I can savè on those cards. All in all nice recommendation ✌🏻
@wiggle_plays Please test it out if possible. Everywhere I ask, a huge debate ensues. Some say it's bugged, some say it works, some say it's supposed to not work when crouching.
Yes, it is completely broken. Sometimes it bugs out and you take a massive damage spike out of nowhere. I noticed when using a Ricochet power armor build to farm the Guardian robot, sometimes the damage I took would spike, and the robot would ALSO take a big chunk of damage because of Reflective - I took big damage, so the robot did too. Took off the effect and the damage I received evened out and quit being so spiky. Just don't bother with Sentinels till it's fixed - if it ever is...
Yeah... sentinels is definitely great on paper... somehow it still seems weird when its not working...but its fine when it is working... Ive seen this explanation before... when the 15% to not proc hits...it negates all resistences thus you get hit harder...when it works...it works.... As someone who doesnt rarely stands still and roleplays as a Amazon Warehouse... i prefer my 3rd star on armour to reduce weight on something xD Thanks for the testing though...it still shows the strange behaviour that we do not expect at all...
"it all seems like it just rolls a random dice and you're going to take some random amount of damage. That's crazy." Me: It's almost like it's being controlled by some kind of a "Random Number Generator" designed to keep the game from feeling to predictable. I use RNG for short, it's just something I came up with. Feel free to use it when referring to this phenomenon. It could even become the industry standard someday.
Keep in mind that NPCs can crit, and a crit will ignore not only sentinel’s, but also overeater’s and the 42% damage reduction from a power armor frame itself. This will make the damage disparity MUCH larger between incoming hits and incoming criticals when wearing power armor. I think this is the source of a fair amount of confusion. In my testing, 5/5 pieces works well, but not as well as expected.
I've done some further testing on the Sentinel's effect using power armor and secret service armor. In the video, the strange number variations popped up with 4 or 5 pieces equipped. My assumption at the time was that this might be due to multiple pieces conflicting with each other. It doesn't seem like that's really what's going on. It seems to be related to how much damage you are resisting or avoiding (might be either or both). I started getting strange variations in damage with just 1 piece of power armor or 1 piece of secret service. Either one of these has much higher defense than the entire set of armor in the video. At this point, I'm going to just avoid using Sentinel's on any armor altogether for the time being.
My take is that the "bug" happens as often as the reduction happening. That is, whenever any Sentinel would activate (20% per piece, rolled before the effect activation) you have 75% chance of reducing the damage, otherwise it bugs out and you instead have damage calculated as your resistance was 0 :P
This would explain why with less pieces it happens less.
Thankyou for this test info. I dropped sentinal when i started to notice large chunks of my health bar just vanishing. Suddely Scorch were one shotting me out of nowhere.
I noticed that with 1 piece of Sentinel on my power armor my bloodied character had wierd deaths. After removing the effect those haven't happened anymore, so something is definetely off.
@@wiggle_plays Looks like they are totally changing sential etc on the PTS.
Apparently there's a fix in the way (maybe on the 20th?) BUT - it's going to work a bit differently...
When it works 75% of the time it’s fine and works as intended. From what I’ve read and what Vlad Armstrong discovered is that the 25% chance it doesn’t proc sentinels basically deletes all your damage resistances and that damage gets through as effectively”true damage”, hence the random and massive spikes seen in Vlad Armstrongs videos. For bloodied builds it’s actually pretty dangerous. You’ll be tanking just fine and then BAM you’re dead to a massive buggy hit.
if this is whats going on its gets way more dangerous when you fight actual enemies and have actual armor damn
I'm running full sentinels on my raid build PA and full health and when that damage spike hits it wipes me out. Not just dangerous for bloodied. Going to 3 pieces it appears.
Aw, so my guess was correct, 25% of the times it activates (more likely with more pieces) you get damage as your resistances were 0 :P
The problem was never that the effect didn't proc or that it didn't reduce damage correctly, it has always been the rest of your defenses are entirely bypassed when it does not proc. When you're comparing with such low defenses you don't see much of that negative, but it really shows through when you're min-maxing your defense. If you repeat the same test but replace the 1* effect with Assassin's, you'd be seeing as low as just 1-2 damage when it does proc but you'd still be seeing 54-55 when it does not instead of the 8 you'd be expecting; you could go all the way up to full Assassin's Hellcat armor with all the defensive perks maxed out so those hits are only doing 0-1 damage, the moment you put on the Sentinel's effect you'll be taking the full 54-55 damage every time it fails to proc.
The issue is well documented and dates back 5-6 years.
It’s probably gonna be said a lot but you’ve got to test it with power armor. Or maybe secret service armor or something with high armor values so we can see the massive difference in damage between it proc’ing and not proc’ing.
Yea, you gotta test in power armor way more noticeable
Ya it's safe to say between this video and angry turtle's video the higher you go up the DR chain the bigger difference you will see. I use it on a covert scout armor set and the difference is very small.
it likely applies 0 resistance to the damage 25% of the time. That's why with power armor the difference is even bigger :D
Thank you for taking the time to test this
Make sure to send in a ticket about this. Cuz they will claim they haven't heard anything about this issue. They are incompetent
They noticed, there's a fix coming... at some time, but, they also changed a bit how it works. Maybe we're going to get it after the maintenance (rumor - we don't know when).
I run a PA build that is essentially a Tank. I have 3 pieces of Sentinel and 2 with Weapon Weight Red.
I can tell you, I can Tank shot after shot with little effect, then all of a sudden I’ll take multiple shots that will consecutively take multiple HUGE chucks of HP.
There is something wrong this it, but I just don’t know what.
Damage goes straight to your HP when the effect fails to proc, bypassing all other defense. It's an old problem that has been well documented for the past 5-6 years, but never got addressed.
The thing about sent now is that if it haven't proc'ed damage reduction, you receive damage that will ignore all your resistances
That's what the problem has been for the past 5-6 years; it's not a new problem, and at this point it seems they have no intention of fixing it.
correct
wanted to say exact same thing, guess i dont have to
Basically the enemies have a 25% chance for 100% Anti Armor 4 Star on their guns when you run a full set? =)
@@Silversmith70 Kinda, but even anti-armor effects don't ignore the % resistances.
A 100 damage shot with 100% armor penetration would still only do 70 damage through full Overeaters (or 25, through full Assassin's or similar), but if you also have Sentinel's and it fails to proc then you're eating all 100 damage.
@@GremlinSciences Its weird taking it off my armor pieces for something else, there was a time when that was what everyone hoped for. Thank you!
Its power armor that is really noticeable. What happens is whe sentenals triggers it negates all other armor bonuses. So you end up taking more damage in power armor when sentenals triggers
nah, the problem is that damage resistance is ignored when sentinel does not proc, so the other 15% of the time.
Here's a thought... what if it's a SPECIFIC armor piece that's doing it? For example, maybe it only happens if you equip a chest piece or a left leg piece.
If that hasnt been tested, it probably should be. I'm sure everyone has experienced the glitch when loading into a new world, sometimes your jetpack is bugged and you have to unequip and reequip the chest piece to fix it.
Maybe that's the issue here. A certain piece is glitching out and perhaps it can be bypassed by simply not equipping that piece.
I was thinking that too. Maybe? 🤔
This test is inconclusive like all the other ones I've watched. I think the testing methods are flawed.
Thank you for this video, in my personal experience, you only need one sentinels piece on PA for it to work really well with reflective pieces.
You do have to stand still.
My speculation about what the (bugged) Sentinel behaviour is:
The check for Sentinel is done globally, not per piece: There's an initial check that evaluates the chance of ANY Sentinel activating: 20% per piece with a Sentinel mod.
IF it activates, 75% chance reduce damage ELSE you take damage like you had 0 resistance (bug).
This would explain why with a full set you get those numbers, and with less pieces it scales down that "25% 0 resistances bug" from happening.
I wonder, do each of the pieces trigger independently or as one unit with stacking effects? Seems like it groups as one stacked effect based on these tests.
Thanks for this! Super informative. Now to go switch out some sentinels on my builds for something else.
It's frustrating because it's obviously broken, and if it worked correctly, it would easily be the best third star for armour in terms of survivability/tank. Perhaps just in general.
Developer incompetence strikes yet again. 🤦♂️
Keep in mind that NPCs can crit, and a crit will ignore not only sentinel’s, but also overeater’s and the 42% damage reduction from a power armor frame itself. This will make the damage disparity MUCH larger between incoming hits and incoming criticals.
I think this is the source of a fair amount of confusion. In my testing, 5/5 pieces works well, but not as well as expected.
I've got it equipped on all five pieces of my power armor and I noticed no benefit whatsoever to have it after switching to a set of power armor without it
The one thing that happens to me is random health drops I use a bloodied build and it happens randomly and when I change builds dude just croaks over
I always thought sentinels never worked
3 pieces of sentinels & 2 pieces of cavaliers would be good for a daily driver & maybe bethesda will see this vid & help them fix the issue! Great vid & great testing thank you Wiggle!
Maybe the Fallout 76 meta is having a build that involves the least complicated server calculations.
I hoped I could look at a video where some fanboi wouldn't mention that turtle guy who gets all his information 2nd hand, sadly I was mistaken. This video was good however.
great work on the video love the data. Wander if we can get the damage number lower if adding the 4star tanky ontop of sentanals??
They need to fix suppressor and sent
thanks for this test it helped alot of people
Can you test the cavalier effect.?
Not easily. I can't sprint and look at the damage in the pip boy at the same time.
Sentinel does not guarantee your damage absorption.
This game is so fkt
Sentinel's is one the 3-star mods that I can't unlock...
Thanks for the test
Could you maybe test if the assaultron head is good on the ghoul pts?
Are people having the same issue with cavaliers?
It wouldn't surprise me but I haven't heard anything. That would be much harder to test.
Please test it again on Power Armor
Or just with proper defenses in general. Power armor gets hit a bit harder because it has a base 42% damage reduction, but effects like Assassin's are also impacted and it even bypasses the armor rating (DR, ER, etc)
so, 3 pcs of sent and 2 pcs of cav, got it
Nah mate, 5 pieces of Thru Hikers to spend those point elsewhere.
I dont have any sentinel mod on my power armor and I can easily tank the whole raid.
Like im not kidding, survivability is not even remotely an issue.
Im a little stupid, my answear is considering Power Armor.
So if you do not run Power Armor dont take Thru-Hikers because you can get 90% weight reduction for either Chem or Food on the Backpack.
@salamifinger9510 i mean why not have full set of thru hikers with high capacity backpack and get 5 extra perk points and +50 to carry weight?
I'd recommend skipping out on Sentinel's at the very least, the problem he has trouble pinning down is that the damage is bypassing all other reductions when the effect does not proc. The tankier you try to build, the more Sentinel's is going to hurt. The problem has been well documented for the past 5-6 years and was never addressed.
The effect works alright if they're the only thing you have for defense, but it's poison to properly tanky builds. Tanky builds are better off going for some other 3* like Thru-Hiker's (weight reduction) or Electrified (return damage).
NOTE: Cavalier's might have the same problem that just hasn't been well-reported, it received the same changes as Sentinel's but was never very popular.
@@trailertrasher3881 well, that works aswell, but at that point I might consider getting 5 Arms Dealer or Ammo Carrier so that I can savè on those cards.
All in all nice recommendation ✌🏻
Does it trigger the effect when crouching?
The wiki says that crouching works but I only tested while standing.
@wiggle_plays Please test it out if possible.
Everywhere I ask, a huge debate ensues. Some say it's bugged, some say it works, some say it's supposed to not work when crouching.
Thanks for making the video, smirking at past commentor haters.
Yes, it is completely broken. Sometimes it bugs out and you take a massive damage spike out of nowhere. I noticed when using a Ricochet power armor build to farm the Guardian robot, sometimes the damage I took would spike, and the robot would ALSO take a big chunk of damage because of Reflective - I took big damage, so the robot did too. Took off the effect and the damage I received evened out and quit being so spiky. Just don't bother with Sentinels till it's fixed - if it ever is...
Yeah... sentinels is definitely great on paper... somehow it still seems weird when its not working...but its fine when it is working...
Ive seen this explanation before... when the 15% to not proc hits...it negates all resistences thus you get hit harder...when it works...it works....
As someone who doesnt rarely stands still and roleplays as a Amazon Warehouse... i prefer my 3rd star on armour to reduce weight on something xD
Thanks for the testing though...it still shows the strange behaviour that we do not expect at all...
Compare Vital vs Rapid mods
"it all seems like it just rolls a random dice and you're going to take some random amount of damage. That's crazy."
Me: It's almost like it's being controlled by some kind of a "Random Number Generator" designed to keep the game from feeling to predictable. I use RNG for short, it's just something I came up with. Feel free to use it when referring to this phenomenon. It could even become the industry standard someday.
gj! nice video
It deffo works.
I just don't understand WHY are people using Sentinels Sharon!😂😂
Keep in mind that NPCs can crit, and a crit will ignore not only sentinel’s, but also overeater’s and the 42% damage reduction from a power armor frame itself. This will make the damage disparity MUCH larger between incoming hits and incoming criticals when wearing power armor.
I think this is the source of a fair amount of confusion. In my testing, 5/5 pieces works well, but not as well as expected.