[0.8.5 updated] Kryce's Manifest Armour & Shield Throw | Simply Unethical damage

Sentinel
6

After playing a variation of this for a while - its actually a fairly nice build to level/farm as you go because there are lots of different ways you can go as you find better gear. You can even use a weapon/shield till you find a decent 2h or if you are feeling a little squishy… Grief, I used an exalted dagger for many empowered Mono levels… Lots of combinations I have tried work… and even at 100+ corruption you dont really feel like you are not doing enough damage…

And the health leech on melee - that should be in big bold letters in your guide - the MA is virtually indestructable with that.

The one major downside to this is the silly AI controlling the Manifest Armour. It really has no clue most of the time and while the natural choice is to deal with X that is nuking you from afar, it will continually race off to attack Y on the opposite side of the screen forcing your to spam A and waiting for him to get to where you need him.

If there was a way to more easily direct the MA other than A, this would be a really really good build to play… A simple node in the skill tree to make it attack what you attack without using the A would make this fantastic…

7

Thanks for the build guide, I can’t wait to try it out! The T4 dungeon boss has been kicking my butt, so I’m looking forward to taking it down in a few seconds :slight_smile:

I don’t currently have a forge guard, so I’d be leveling a new one, how would you recommend leveling this build?

8

This how i typically level my sentinels:

Lvl 1: Hammer of lorent, use vengeance until you get rive.

Lvl 1-15: Either keep using hammer of lorent or craft yourself a slightly better 2hander. Once you hit 15, get dream thorn. Spec your rive for void dmg on the left side of the tree.

Lvl 19: get darkstrides and continue using rive.

This setup will stay the same till you get your mastery. For your second skill specialisation, get multistrike and start speccing it for forge weapons generation i.e. Attack speed and the node that says “using forge strike at max armament stacks consumes all stacks to summon forge weapons”.

Once you get your mastery, unspec rive, spec forge strike for forge weapon dmg. i.e. the right side of the tree and any other nodes that say they affect forged weapons as well. However, depending on how much damage you have, you might want to wait for your 3rd skill slot before you do this as losing rive is a big dmg loss.

From here on you will be a hybrid summoner, doing dmg yourself and through your minions. Continue upgrading your gear since your forged weapons depend on it.

This will continue until you get manifest armour specced. At this point, you should at least have these 3: multistrike/forgestrike/manifest armour.

You now have 2 choices depending on your gear.

If you have good gear for your MA to excel, get shield throw as your fourth skill spec and start switching to a pure minion play style.

If you do not have good gear yet, keep the above 3 skills. Put points into paladin and unlock sigils to buff you and your forged weapon’s dmg, until you have decent gear for your MA to become the star of the show.

After you get your 5th skill specialisation, your skill bar should look like:

Multistrike-forgestrike-manifest armour-shield throw-sigils of hope (early game minion playstyle). This setup is mana intensive, make sure you get mana on multistrike use from sentinel’s tree and spec out of it when you’re transitioning out.

If you have farmed gear on another character, then you can switch to the endgame skill setup shown in the guide and get javelin as your 5th skill.

9

Yep, i was using an exalted odachi in 0.8.3 and it was by no means lacklustre.

Regarding the leech, i prefer to use ribbon of blood because glove prefixes are a big source of damage for us. Crit chance, melee attack speed, throwing attack speed are insane for this build. So having to give one of them up for a source of leech that you can get on a ring, which doesn’t do that much offensively, didn’t feel good to me.

But it definitely can be an interim measure till you get a ribbon of blood. And I’m pretty sure i put a big bold “MUST” in the glove gearing section talking about leech lol.

How i tackle the bad minion AI: i run past several packs and pull them to me, this causes my MA to catch up to me since i moved off screen. I then stop moving and let my MA go ham in the, now bunched up pack while i shield throw from a distance.

10

Question about damage scaling in this build: the “increased damage” on chest etc. all apply to the minion at a multiplied value - what about the “increased minion damage” on helm? Does it only apply to the minion at a 1x value, or is that also multiplied to provide extra value?

Second, ideally would we have throwing attack speed on rings (23% t5, and legendary on the ribbons) for a lot more procs? Would the next best prefix be attunement/minion damage?

I also had a question about shred: do you currently have any sources of armor shred, or phys or void shred? With maw it seems like the damage is maybe 40/60 between void and phys so not sure how to approach resistance shred. However if you don’t have any sources of armor shred, perhaps amulet suffix, or a +3 manifest helm would allow 1 pt in the armor shred node (is there anywhere else you’d put that pt?)

Lastly, is there anything you think we could do to improve clear speed? Any possible sources of minion movement speed maybe, or some other stat?

11

Greetings pounder of posteriors!

For the helmet, the minion damage is applied at 1x, i use that affix for +2 skill points. Taking more melee damage here might be worth it but I’m no math wiz so I’m not sure how the math checks out. With 20 points, you will not be able to max all the stat effectiveness nodes.

For rings, stats priority is throwing attack speed-minion dmg-attunement. First 2 have 100% uptime while attunement only gives all its benefits when we stand in the banner.

Shred wise, I am intending to get it in glove suffix since it will be multiplied. Getting it on amulet is not worth it imo as only we apply it instead of our minion (which hits more than us). Another reason is also bc it is hard to sustain 3k life while having max res on this build (i still don’t) so every suffix slot must be efficient.

Of course this is provided that you like staying alive. I also intend to push high corruption so I made the build with some semblance of defence in mind. If meeting hades is a hobby of yours, you can get shred on both ammy and gloves, as well as getting void shred from black sun and phys shred from heorot.

For a +3/+4 MA helm, yes definitely put those in shred, I’m working towards that as well.

Clear speed wise, i suggest you run through a few packs to draw aggro, bunch them up then send your MA into them. This makes it so that enemies are coming from 1 direction and you can easily obliterate them by throwing shields from safety instead of having your MA do 360s between each pack on your screen.

Move speed wise, MA alr moves so fast that I have trouble keeping up with my eyes, but hey if you want more, feel free to farm for LP on suloron’s and slam movement speed on it.

I don’t think theres any other stat that can get clear up.

Now go and pound those posteriors with your MA!

12

Yip… I am doing that now… In an Arena environment, I virtually run loops around the map, stopping every so often when I see the MA is in a bunch of mobs then I tag him, and start running again… not a great way to play, but it does work… can be an FPS killer tho…

I have found it fairly flexible - I use ribbon on blood and leech affixes elsewhere… If you are min/maxing then yes, gloves have way more important affixes, but there is so much “spare” damage that I have found you dont need the build to be perfect before it works… The general concept of taggin your MA and it mowing down mobs/boss/rares seems to work no matter what you do… Sure, you might not 5s Orobyss but lets face it a 20s kill is just as good… :wink:

13

Ok yeah the armor shred suffix on gloves would be a huge spike to your damage, with t5 you’d maintain at least 40 stacks I’d guess, so ~60% more damage multiplier on bosses after a bit. I was just asking about res shred since I don’t usually play mixed shred.

For the t6 helm, I do think that t5 on a myrmidon or winged would be better than t6 on a worse base since the 60% shred isn’t worth the loss. Not sure if I have an exalted MA on a top base.

MS on boots was basically what I thought as well. a t6 roll would translate to 100% increased minion speed. t6 attack speed on gloves if possible would also help the build feel smoother, and also be a lot more damage - if that’s the only source of MA increased attack speed, a t6 23% would be almost 20% more damage than a 15% roll, and a t7 almost 40% more damage.

To cap crit, we would need ~400% increased crit chance (15% roll) - 450% crit ch (13% roll). Gloves alone can get you up to 360% in a perfect world, but with the way shaping runes are right now that’s not happening. I guess you could use a Solarum or Dawn plate if you had exalted crit on solarum gloves (100% total) and you didn’t have exalted AS. That would offer 11-15 more flat phys for the MA as well from the skill tree node.

The damage is already great so I wouldn’t want to sacrifice tank or clear for single target - in fact the opposite would be true. I was wondering how this build might tank up to survive in higher corruption being a 2h build. I’ve played only shield-using builds in high corruption so far (400+) so I’m not sure what you’d do to beef up a minion 2h build here besides stacking armor and ~3k hp. The attunement banner armor is also insane but it’s not reliable when clearing. Would this be more of a t4 Julra farmer instead of a high corruption mono farmer?

14

Thanks for doing the wicked math!

I have played my smite pally to 400+ and while this build only has life, res and armour, i think its definitely capable of farming 400 corruption since you can easily get to max armour dmg reduction if you have enough throwing atk spd.

The problem at high corruption levels would be that you need to adopt a safer playstyle i.e. send your minion ahead to draw aggro and blow up packs individually. This ofc gives you slower clear.

But i think this is rly just how it is at high corruption since some combination of mods and dangerous monsters will straight up rip you a new one, no matter what build you’re playing.

15

I don’t mean to downplay anything, in fact I am trying to build a forgeguard for the first time just to play your build because I really think it could be something great. I have level 80 characters so it’s not like I don’t know the game and am a newbie but I *just noticed something that I wanted to bring to your attention. At the top you mention having Level of Rive or Level of Vengeance as an Ideal prefix 2 on the helm. Rive is Body only. Vengeance and Smelter’s Wrath both work for helm and have melee damage attached to them as you mentioned. No offense intended. Speaking of Legendary Apathy’s Maw, after seeing your build, I raced to get a monolith to 50 corruption, which is required to get the maw to drop according to Tunklab (which is how I found out about Rive) (thankfully I have a helm that has +1 MA +1 Smelter’s Wrath on it with enough FP to build up MA) anyhow. Maw dropped first time and I had a two handed axe purple with crit chance on it that was Tier 6 so I risked it and Heck yeah that’s what moved over! I feel so good lol. I have a lot of good gear for this build. The only catch is leveling up. I have a mid 80’s void knight that just crushes everything… period but am always looking to try something different. This looks great.

As a side question: I see you have Attunement on two items… I know you say health, resists, and crit avoid are the ones to go for. Is there any reason to look for Attunement or was that a side effect of getting items with the other stats? I’m building my loot filter and wondering if I should add attunement.

16

First of all, congrats on hitting the T6 crit on your maw, it is undoubtedly one of the biggest upgrades you can get for this build.

No worries, no offence taken at all :slight_smile: Good catch on the helm affix. Unfortunately, idt i can edit the original post any further for some reason. Anyway, i think its quite intuitive that we get the skill affixes for the associated melee damage so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I believe i have attunement on rings because i couldn’t get throwing speed/minion dmg rings. Similiar to my reply above, the stat priority for rings is throwing speed-minion dmg-attunement.

However, having too much throwing speed when you’re low level without having too much attunement on the tree may result in you losing your mana pool too fast so adjust accordingly.

17

first of all, absolutely love this, I was looking for a reason to level a forge guard and this build fit the bill 10x over

a question though, how important would you say javelin banner is? I’m so used to zoom zooming with shield rush i’ve been doing normal echos with that spec’d instead, but i’m worried if I’ll need the extra oomph from banner for Jura/high corruption shades or if I can get away without it for the sake of clear speed

18

Chipping in here… I am running Empowered Monos with 130+ corruption and I havent needed to use javelin during normal play at all… I proc it in Orobyss or boss battles for the def but it really doesnt seem neccessary based on how I am playing right now…

ps my build is not near the OP in damage/ehp yet (no maw not enough health) but its critting 200k+ on the dummy almost every shot and Armour is 80% Health 2000. I do however have lucky rings with minion damage.health…

19

There is a couple of reasons why I chose to take javelin:

  1. There is a lack of skill points for us to put into our passives once we reach the end of the FG tree and get the 150% minion health node. Most of the other nodes on the FG tree straight up don’t benefit us. Sure we could put points into some armour nodes, but we alr get so much armour from shield throw that i find it inefficient. This is a big reason why i decided to stack attunement.

  2. Javelin provides us with a source of healing. This was important to me bc prior to this build, i was playing life based melee abom which solely relied on life pots to sustain. That felt like absolute shit so I absolutely wanted a healing skill since there is no minion dmg leech for players.

So basically, javelin is not just a solution for sustaining our life, amping dmg and armour, movement skill, but also for us to have an efficient skill point investment.

But I am curious about which skill y’all are interested in picking up over javelin.

20

I agree… there is very little left in the passives to help this build… I figure at least 5 points (maybe more) at lvl 100 have no real purpose in this build…

Javelin… I have it for those moments when it helps against big hits (healing you) but I honestly am struggling with alternatives… I tried Ring Of Shields but that takes the richocet so thats annoying trying to tag the MA… Still works, and it does make you effectively godlike…
I tried lunge and shield rush but again - they dont really do anything for the build… Other skills either waste mana or I found that I didnt even bother activating them…

I am thinking of Rebuke as an oh sh!t save skill but I dont think I will need it if I get my health up closer to 3k.

Honestly I think that for most of the situations, this build is fine just with MA, Sigils & Shield Throw… The others seem to be entirely adjacent to the main purpose of the build.

21

I’m waiting on them to release the skill tree for paladin’s healing skill. Fingers crossed that it can provide buff’s like primalist’s eterra’s blessing.

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22

Cant remember what the devs said about the Healing skill … If I recall it was going to be replaced entirely but they seemed quite cagey with details… Maybe they are leaving it until MP is active.

23

Hi :slight_smile: Quite new to Last Epoch but not to ARPGS but I can’t seem to figure out why you want Rive +# skill points if you’re not using the skill. Would love to know why :smiley:

24

It is hybrid affix which also grants % melee damage, which is also added to Manifest Armor with increased effect. So check possible + skill level / % melee damage affixes in planner and add them in your filter :slight_smile:

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25

I’ve been theorycrafting what I think is a similar build (I only barely skimmed your post to avoid “spoilers”, I’ll return after I build mine if I need help). I’m curious though, Today I was browsing different sets in the game and found Sunforged Curiass. As someone that hasn’t played any Sentinel yet and only have about 60 hours under my belt, do you think the 13 Forged Weapons equalling 260% fire dmg would be worth using Forged Weapon with a one hander? Or are stats on a 2h too good? My rough draft build uses Shield Throw, Manifest Armor, Ring of Shields, Shield Bash, and Shield Rush. I could drop the Shield Bash for Forge Strike to work with the Sunforged Curiass