Title. The plasma sentry shoots out blue fire, which is really strong against any xenomorph that isn’t a rav, queen, or king (but also fire prevents ravagers from healing).
But I’ve also seen people make the case that the plasma sentry often misses and may even hit marines on accident instead.
What do you all think?
ITs goofy and other sentry tend to be better… BUT can be worth it in the right chokes that make it hard to get out of the way.
Edit: i also though it did blue fire, guess it really is just shit.
I don’t usually hate equipment options this hard, but for plasma sentries I make an exception.
Plasma sentry is complete and utter dogshit and I consider anyone who picks it to be griefing
It does no damage to xenos. It will never, ever kill anything outside of larvae or huggers.
It blocks LoS. The shitty smoke makes it so no one can actually kill the xenos who get hit by it. As such, it is literally free boiler gas for xenos and is a xenocord weapon.
It sets everyone on fire.
I think you may be conflating ‘white phosphorous’ with the actual blue flames. WP in CM13 is generally considered to be clouds of damaging smoke that set you on fire, but the SADAR’s incend rocket being called WP makes it hard to distinguish between the two, which is unfortunate.
While the plasma sentry indeed technically uses ‘WP’, it just uses really weak orange fire, which doesnt do much DoT at all.
Take the DMR if you want a long range support sentry, plasma is trash.
Meta sentry pick (and by far the best sentry) is the base blue flamer sentry, which lets you place a pyro spec anywhere on the map- Automatically S+++ tier.
Oh, oops.
Also the base shoots blue fire?
I personally struggle to appreciate the tactical utility of the Plasma Sentry. Its only advantage is that it can fire up to 10 tiles from its position, which means it can strike targets 3 tiles beyond visual range.
The only issue is that this only kills facehuggers. (This is assuming the weapon actually hits the target). No other xeno is dying to this attack.
Furthermore, the massive amount of smoke the weapon puts up acts to block marine line of sight, while not really breaking xeno LOS, is a huge detriment which does not feel at all appropriate to how weak this weapon is.
Compared to the base flamer sentry, where a single hit will kill a quite a few xeno classes from full health if they can’t find someone to extinguish them.
The only world where the Plasma Sentry makes sense is as an anti-human weapon. It is a supremely effective weapon in killing humans (another malus since this weapon kills 0 xenos but a dozen marines).
This might make sense if you are pretending we play in a game where our weapons only exist for killing humans and fighting xenos is a conincedence, but that argument sucks.
Yes base flamer sentry actually shoots out real blue fire, the exact same as the SADAR’s bluefire WP rocket and the pyrotechnician’s feared crusher-rizzler 9000 blue flame.
The ‘upgrades’ to the flamer sentry are all shit because of this
Mini sentry shoots out orange fire (ass), plasma sentry sets marines on fire and tickles xenos (even more ass)
The base flamer sentry is literally specialist-tier
It’s like if the DMR sentry shot actual AMR bullets at xenos, instead of tickling them (god bless HP % based dmg)
kinda wack how awful sentry balance is
S-Tier
A-Tier
Crickets…
B-Tier
C-Tier
D-Tier
F-Tier
Who Tier
what about O sentrys?
O sentries are solid in backline areas or to cover medics. They are decent
thwomp plants to outline sentry rework at some point but that will require a lot of manhours to code I assume. flag is good to have ONE in fob (or now at transformer) as it act like permanent paratarget and cas target
I’d argue overclocked Tesla deserves a good ranking, the extra stun is actually appreciable enough to allow for you to kill players who get hit by them
O-Sentries are yes, very good for medic hugboxes due to hugger invincibility
I’d say this tier list is pretty accurate overall
I’d like to make a case for the JIMA Flag, and specifically the Extended Range upgrade for it. Defend and Aim orders PERMANENTLY on if you are constantly pushing the flag up with you, alongside that permanent CAS flare, is deceptively powerful and very, very good coupled with good CAS.
You do have to babysit it more than a sentry to get that value out of it, and there is no such thing as immediate gratification with a JIMA flag, but I’d wager it increases DPS of a whole ungaball by a not-so-insignificant amount with the accuracy order allowing stray shots or even normally whiffed close ones to land and tap bugs. Defend orders are also always, always good. People who would normally fall flat trying to plab the bug get one or two more slashes before they fall down because of the painkiller bonus, or people who are retreating back into the ball won’t fall dead in front of the resin door to be woybait.
There could be a case for the wonderful Warbanner move order upgrade for the JIMA flag, except that the trans flag inherits the base JIMA’s absolutely TERRIBLE range of like, three tiles; this is why I am not talking about the base JIMA flag at all, really. There is zero space to gain a benefit from a move order in a three-tile radius around the flag, even if the Defend and Aim orders are sort-of okay within that radius, but I think a buff to all JIMA radii would make others see my vision a bit more.
Orders are powerful! Squad Leaders, make sure to USE 'EM!
Good only for HvH
Removed from HvH
Tesla is actually a very strong option as it literally blocks Queen’s screech and some other crucial abilities. Approaching one might be very risky for xenos, so a well placed tesla can cause problems for xenos.
no cause it FFs marines who are hell charging
base flamer sentry is better
Sniper sentry is my personal pick. Consistently good damage that can be placed from afar. I’d say it’s better then the mini-sentry.
Sniper sentry does pretty solid damage against all xenos from far away, while mini-sentry is a joke for xenos with a lot of armor like defender or crusher. Any sentry that is best suited for cqc is weak, because tier 3s will likely break it apart before the sentry can do real damage.
Flamer sentry is undeniably the best pick though, surprised it’s not even an upgrade and that the upgrade is the worst sentry in the game.
Tesla is S.
If you have a group of marines and a tesla, you can melt basically any xeno that gets slowed down by it. No abilities, and slower movement.
Not sure where I’d rank base and overclocked, though overclocked seems really scary. Does base slow tier 3s as well?
I almost agree with steelpoint. Sometimes you have no idea how annoying a sniper sentry can be, ESPECIALLY one that fired almost all 500 shots in a round. It is like 50 damage/hit. When as a warrior you charge to a cade and back, and in the process you will get 4 plinks from the sniper sentry, you only have 300/500 of your health left to work with in your pokes on cades. If a spitter has to run into it while poking a cade, they only get a few hits before having to spend the time to heal. It doesnt kill, but my god can it delay.
Realistically only base flame turret has a chance to kill me though. S tier with no rivals.
My opinion on Tesla was more informed that I rarely see it and have never used it as a ComTech. The best use-case of it I’ve seen is the rare surv hold on Kutjevo where I get stunned for fifty years. The free stun is strong, but I just don’t know enough about it to judge it.
I also did forget Omni-Sentry, I would classify it as C-Tier but with the caveat that its situationally stronger in some circumstances to a stock sentry, such as rear-line defense in a CQC area.
JIMA flags still feel kinda gay (pun intended). It’s hard to judge whether your sentry has impact or not, because orders are rarely noticeable. In my 1k marine hours I still have no idea what orders are and what they do, because I can’t see the difference between buffed marines and regular ones
Other sentries are much simpler. Me place flamer → flamer hit marines → me feel good