Sentinel Class Issues

[Hotohori]

Sentinel is the only true sub class in the game but with at the moment there are many issues to look at about this class.

1) The way skill points are gained for this class are unfair to other classes. The amount of skill points gained are based on the rank of the main class and not the rank of the player's sentinel. A rank 1 gladiator can continue to raise the skill points of their rank 49 sentinel off level 1 monsters which was achieved through another class. The calculations for skill point gains should be determined by the rank of the sentinel class against the rank of the monsters.

2) The number of classes that can receive skill points for sentinel are too many. The most common rank 50 class right now is undoubtedly sentinel. With the incorrect skill gain and three different classes able to rank it with out any extra work is quite unfair. Future one-handed weapon DoW and DoM classes will likely be able to equip a shield as well unless drastic discrimination is added to the current shields to change who can wear what with future class releases. With all the problems stated above many people will have a meaningless rank 100 sentinel class

3) The rank of the sentinel class has absolutely no effect on the quality of any shield related skills or actions. Ranking up sentinel gives you seven skills and the ability to guard/block and that is all. These skills mostly benefit gladiator which already has a few shield skills and traits of its own. How long a player blocks is determined by wield rate. How often and how much a player blocks is by shield type and just having a shield on is additional defense and magic defense. The current sentinel skills could be given to gladiator through ranking up gladiator and be erased completely and it would be no different.

4) I cannot see the progress of my sentinel skill rank at all in game. There is no <exp/skill> command to display such information and the rank and level bars never display for sentinel because it is not a main class. The only way to check such information is through the lodestone character pages.

Overall, Sentinel just really feels like an incomplete class that could easily be assimilated into the gladiator move set and be erased without much complaint.

[Gath]

Well, these are fine, but remember, SE is working on changing classes around, and that will probably include Sentinel

[Rentahamster]

I posted my thoughts about this in the gladiator section:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post15660

1. They need to get rid of the Sentinel class and just incorporate all of its skills into the gladiator class.

2. Create new mage-specific shield skills and incorporate those into the THM and CON classes
2b. Create mage specific 2-hand staff only skills and incorporate those into the THM and CON classes

3. Create weapons and shield sheathing/unsheating animations while running so my char doesn't stop in her tracks all the time.

4. Lower the stamina cost on Guard, and slightly increase its base duration, and hasten the animation.

5. Make more variety in the sheilds so that the player has a choice of optimizing for block, wield, or def, and make all the choices have good reasons for someone wanting to optimize that way.

6. Enable block animations for shield skills

7. When a successful block (or parry or evade, for that matter), show it in the chat log in bold, bright, capital letters.

[Nephera]

Nooooo let me exploit it first nooooooooo

[Hotohori]

Personally I don't think combining sentinel with gladiator is the best solution but is probably the easiest for now. It would be great if they could rework the whole class into a full main class instead. Gladiator is poorly translated from the original name of sword user and sentinel is not that exactly. There are already many sword types for gladiator which could be easily split up to become half gladiator class weapons and half sentinel class weapons (dagger, short sword, long sword, falchion, scimitar, gladius, spatha, macuahuitl). Someone posted somewhere on the forum to make gladiator an offensive dual sword wielding class and making the current gladiator what sentinel should be.

[Rentahamster]

Personally I don't think combining sentinel with gladiator is the best solution but is probably the easiest for now. It would be great if they could rework the whole class into a full main class instead.

Splitting it up into two different classes would dilute the class pool too much. Just keep it all in one class and add the necessary gear and skills (sword and shield; two handed sword; dual wield) so that the gladiator can make a custom tank or custom DD build.

[Galamantyl]

Captain America used his shield as a weapon...

Maybe they should make shields into weapons.