The Sentinel role, using MMORPG vernacular, is meant to be the “tank”-the high HP and high defense character that is meant to be a meat shield-redirecting enemy attacks towards the Sentinel and away from weaker party members.

As a result, there are two important battle capabilities that a Sentinel provides. Firstly, a Sentinel can redirect enemy attacks using their Provoke or Challenge abilities. Secondly, they have high HP and other defensive abilities that minimize the amount of damage they take, including Mediguard, Steelguard and Evade.

The ability to withstand heavy attacks is not innate, however, and while any character in their Sentinel role will take less damage over all, there are characters in the game that are better suited to this task given their naturally higher HP and defensive stats. The first character, and the best in this role, is obviously Snow, with Fang being a close second.

There are situations, however, where having more than one Sentinel or all of your characters in their Sentinel role, can be advantageous. This is typically the case when you know that a heavy and high damage ability is about to be used by the enemy. The more characters that are in their Sentinel role increases the damage reduction across the entire party due to Role Bonuses as noted below.

Role Bonuses

Increasing the Role Level of a Sentinel (by activating Role Level crystals in a character’s Sentinel Crystarium) will reduce the amount of damage taken by the Sentinel and any of their party members, according to the following chart:

Role Level	Damage Received (Self)	Damage Received (Allies)
1	x0.65	x0.92
2	x0.63	x0.92
3	x0.60	x0.89
4	x0.56	x0.89
5	x0.50	x0.86

Check out the Role Bonuses section for a full overview of the different Role Bonuses that are available in each of the Crystarium using the link below:

AI Controlled Characters

An AI Controlled Sentinel does exactly what we would expect it to do - it starts off by using Provoke or Challenge on nearby enemies and then it begins using their damage reduction abilities. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that.

Sentinel Abilities

A full list of the abilities available to a Sentinel can be found in the Abilities section of the guide or by using the link below:

There are no characters that have unique abilities associated with their Sentinel role, however Lightning and Hope have access to an ability called Elude which can be used in combination with Evade to avoid damage rather than to minimize and mitigate it, which can prove helpful in some situations.