I’m not surprised. Your build sucks, both in offense and defense departments.
It’s called glass cannon builds. They have bad stats too, but they deal enough damage to kill things before things kill you. Your VK can’t do that, so you struggled.
However, that doesn’t make Sentinels or Melee bad, it just makes your build bad.
@F0lk you might not know, but AbombDaChamp is known for his inability of self-criticism. Even if you provided an irrefutable proof that counters his “facts”, he would still continue to parrot his opinion. You can search for the old topics where he demonstrated that if you’re interested.
That’s why the proper response to the “facts” he pulls out of his butt is treating them as such and laugh
I honestly thought, at first, that he was simply doing a political impression, trying to make D2 great again. But apparently no, he just has basically the same (lack of?) mentality.
Welcome!
It’s better to create your own topic in one of the class sections. It’s good to also include additional info, for example if there’s any trouble you’re having, or the general idea/goal you’re looking for.
Your build seems to be focused on Block and Shield Throw, with Rive as the zero mana alternative. I’m guessing you have mana issues right now and can’t really use your Shield Throw constantly.
Try adding points into Polished Steel in the Shield Throw skilltree to quickly solve the problem. There’s also a node that removes cooldown from Shield Throw.
You’re level 35, so right now your defenses look good. You’ll find new item bases as you level up, so keep upgrading to better ones to boost your Armor. As for your other defenses:
Aim for 75% all resistances, start with Physical as that one is the most common.
Look for items with +Health. When you reach Chapter 8 of the campaign, you should have at least 1000 Health. For endgame, you want to aim for at least 3000 Health.
Later on you’ll start finding items with % increased Health and after lvl 45 you’ll start finding Hybrid Health on Boots/Gloves/Belt, which can be combined with the flat Health bonuses.
If you decide to stick with Shield Throw, good combo skills that boost Block bonuses are Ring of Shields in Forge Guard and Sigils of Hope in Paladin.
For damage, Belt, Gloves, Relic and Amulets can have flat Throwing Damage on them.
Rings and Gloves can also have Throwing Attack Speed, but you first need to solve your mana cost.
There are some very rare Sentinel affixes like Throwing Critical Strike Chance or +X to level of Shield Throw, so gather items with these affixes (even bad rares or magic items) and Shatter them in crafting to gain their affix shards.
Important note is that “melee” effects don’t work on throwing skills, so the Leech on your Mace only works when you use Rive, Shield Bash and Shield Rush, but not when you use Shield Throw. You’ll need to find another source that can leech from throwing attacks too, or switch to HP regen. People often use the Bleeding Heart amulet.
Thank you. I have no mana issues. My shield has a 1.8s cooldown. So my mana essentially resets after every throw. I do run if I use shield bash. Should I focus on shield throw or melee, rather than both? Because shield bash is a melee ability, as well.
Also to add. I’m in the dessert area and I’m struggling. I can’t melt things like I done previously. I usually get to this point (dessert level and the neck area) when I die. I’m currently running away from the enemy, flinging my shield.
Relocate 5 passive points into Paladin to get healing hands. despecialize shield rush in favour of healing hands. Make healing hands proc of melee attacks, make it deal damage, reduce the casting cost to zero and turn it into a melee attack eventually.
Instead of running away, rive and get healed in the process.
You should pick one main skill which you want to build around.
Right now, you’re specced for Shield Throw. Your Shield Bash works as a buff skill for Shield Throw, and your passive points in Forge Guard are also boosting throwing damage, so I thought you’ve already chosen Shield Throw.
If you want to play melee like HorusKBZ suggested, you should probably stop using Shield Throw and respec your passive points.
Yeah, that’s because throwing skills require you to stack “+X Throwing damage” on items, and you currently have only +24 from from passive points and +10 from gloves.
Still waiting on proof. Your opinions aren’t proof.
Sentinels are not in a good spot. They need a lot of love both offensively and defensively.
Trying to gaslight players into thinking otherwise isn’t how we fix the glaring build problems with Sentinel. This is why people have problems with Sentinels it’s not their build it’s the class design. The Devs need to really work on Sentinels and their mastery and many dead talents and nodes.
Sentinels really need a massive overhaul and hope melee and HP builds get some much deserved love too. Melee and ranged are just worlds apart.
Anothing thing I am confused at. If I have shield throw as my main damage skill, I notice for me to make it have no cool down, I lose damage per hit plus less ricochet. Surely that makes it redundant?
(I seem to be talking to Llama, but I’m talking to TBDog here)
This (remove cooldown or not) is a super important thing to consider for your build. Your itemization must work with your choice.
If you don’t take remove cooldown, then your build should be optimizing for cooldown reduction and probably ignite (some dot ability). The later because you have to wait for the cooldown, and a dot fits naturally into that gameplay. I can’t remember, but if there are nodes/items that allow for the shield to bounce off of you, you want those.
But if you do remove the cooldown, you are making the shield throw more of a single target attack and you’ll need the focus on mana/mana regen (to pay for all those shield tosses) and damage of the correct type (throwing, in this case).
