Is the Plasma Sentry worth it?

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?

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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.

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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.

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Oh, oops.

Also the base shoots blue fire?

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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.

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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

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S-Tier

  • Flamer Sentry: Kills most xenos if they are unsupported, near infinite ammo. Every single xeno caste except Ravager and Queen fear this.

A-Tier
Crickets…

B-Tier

  • Mini-Sentry (Machinegun): Has a deceptively high rate of fire that can threaten a lot of xenomorphs, and its “mini” status means it won’t body block marines (or xenos) and is quicker to deploy and packup. Its a offensive engineers tool. You can’t leave it alone as a single Defender on fortify will waste all of its ammo, plus its 5-tile range is very limiting.

C-Tier

  • Stock Sentry: Painfully average. Medicore damage, mediocre ammo capacity. Its main strength is that it has good range, can threaten Ravagers and the Queen, and it won’t miss. But a single Defender on fortify will waste its ammo and distract it.
  • Sniper Sentry: Good damage, low rate of fire. Always hits. Its a good frontline supplement since it can hurt xenos beyond visual range. In theory it could kill a xeno as it retreats while low on health, in practice it just forces xenos in to cover before they actually engage in combat since the sentry hits xenos before they get in to combat range. Becomes very strong if placed in a very long corridor with a lot of barricades (lifeboat hold my beloved)

D-Tier

  • Shotgun Sentry: Deals “ok” damage, but its ROF is too slow. I’m able to walk up to this sentry as a Hivelord and block it off with resin walls without dying. It might rarely catch a xeno out of position if its placed in a smart way behind a wall but its too much effort.
  • Mini-Sentry (Flamer): Exchanging the borderline overpowered Flamer Sentry, for the mini-version that fires red flame instead of blue flame at 5 tiles. Not totally useless, as it possesses the strengths of the mini-version, but rapid hitting a xeno with weaker red fire is not a good boon.

F-Tier

  • Plasma Sentry: explained above

Who Tier

  • JIMA: Only good for catching bigots.
  • Tesla: …
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what about O sentrys?

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O sentries are solid in backline areas or to cover medics. They are decent

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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

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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!

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Good only for HvH
Removed from HvH
:smirking_face:

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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.

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no cause it FFs marines who are hell charging
base flamer sentry is better

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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.

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