Ancestral Sentry - how can I make this more effective?

[Guy De Alsace]

<p>On using this spell I've noticed that the sentry that is summoned dies almost the instant it is summoned. At most it lasts maybe one or two seconds.</p><p>I was grouped with a Warden yesterday and noticed his triple down arrow faerie ally happily healing away for its full duration while both my Lunar Attendant and Ancestral Sentries invariably died upon summoning.</p><p>Am I missing something? I have full Str line (AOE protection) for dogdog. Just wondering if there are AA lines that can help or something.</p>

[TheSpin]

<p>Warden fairy = A summoned pet that heals for you</p><p>Mystic 'Sentry' = A summoned spirit that takes damage for your target</p><p>You can't compare those two because they are completely different.  The bear pet is more similar to the fairy than the sentry is.  Even if the sentry only takes a few hits and dies, those were probably some pretty big hits.</p>

[Skywarrior]

<p>Ancestral Sentry is a mobile 30k hitpoint area ward with a cool graphic you can cast every few minutes.  What's not to like about it?  Don't think of it as a pet.  It isn't.  And the point isn't to protect it from damage but to let it do its job by absorbing it.  That's 30k damage you don't have to heal.  Sentry is very nice for helping stabilize the initial couple of seconds of a named pull before debuffs get applied.</p>

[Guy De Alsace]

<p>Ahhhh.....I completely misunderstood what the spell did. I thought it was like the badger pet thingy and cast cures. Thanks for clearing that up.</p><p>My Mystic is an alt I havent played much so kind of rusty <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[naMessiah]

<p>Ancestral Sentry is giving me a headache after a week or so as a level 80 mystic. Exactly how does this thing work? I read it's like a group-ward, but why is it never warding my group or me? Even if it's up we're losing health. Is it absorbing <em>random </em>hits?</p>

[naMessiah]

<p>Will reply to myself as it was pretty easy to spot what happend - it only absorbs ~40% of a hit and the rest goes to the target so stupid of me to try and use it as a ward. Is this number also increased when you upgrade the spell or is M1 only more HP?</p>

[Baccalarium]

<p>Tried to look at a log to get real numbers, but those numbers don't seem consistent.</p><p>My expectation is that Ancestral Sentry works much like a fighter casting <a href="http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Intervene" target="_blank">Intervene</a>. It appears that the Sentry casts it about once every 2 seconds untill it dies due to the damage inflicted. If this follows the description of intervene that the Sentry interveneing would itself take half of the damage of the incoming hit, while the player protected from the hit would take anywhere from 50-70% of the damage of the hit.</p><p>I think the Sentry protects the entire group, but that the first player in the group to take a hit after the sentry casts its spell will be the one that gets intercepted. In a quick glance at last night all the damage was prevented from the tank and no AE's appeared to have been intercepted.</p><p>It would be nice if you could have an idea how much benefit upgrading the Sentry to higher levels was. With no description of what it does, we also don't see if an upgrade is worth the cost either.   I think the confusion in trying to deduce the description from log entries is that the Sentry doesn't have the same mitigation as the tank.   There may be some 50/70  to 50/50 split of the incoming damage like the intervene description suggests, but the damage shown in the log file is the damage done to the targets after the mitigation is taken into account and thus is more difficult to match to those percentages.</p>

[Rayche]

<p>Sentry absorbs somewhere around 60-75% of the damage the tank recieves until his 15-16k hit points are depleted.</p><p>He can be healed and pre-warded if you need.</p><p>He follows his target around for a minute before dissapating on his own. (So you can "Pre-ward" with him considerably earlier than you can use your other wards.)</p><p>The biggest downside of him is that he has zero mitigation, and eats big hits needlessly. Ancestral Sentry should assume the mitigation of his target.</p>

[iduckie]

<p>At first I thought it was a joke, lol.. Summoning someones ghost/spirit to protect them? eh? Ha-ha-ha.. right?</p><p>It's actually pretty awesome.</p><p>Ancestral Sentry is a Intercept just like the fighters, but instead of you taking the damage the Sentry does.</p><p>The more damage the Sentry Intercepts the faster it will die due to only having limited HPs.. (This is why on some mobs it takes the big crit and instantly dies).</p><p>I personally don't preward but you can and you can also heal it so it's up for it's full duration.</p>