Phalanx/Sigeon FG

Sentinel
1

I mentioned this somewhere else, but I figured it was worth a separate thread to discuss. This is another idea I’ve been considering for next patch: A retaliation themed FG that makes use of Forgemaster’s Might to Wield the new Unique Phalanx with a shield. Together with Sigeon’s Reprisal we get to auto throw Shield Throw and Javelin. We scale all 3 with strength and phys damage. Jav gets melee damage from the spear, and Shield Throw gets extra throwing damage from retaliation which we can get from Thornmail giving us some from our armor which is increased by str. We can put some more on our gear explicitly, but not sure if that’s what we want or not. Block chance gives more damage to both Vengeance through the unique as well as shield throw and it helps us proc the free shield throw from Sigeon.

The other skill slots can just be support skills. Both Ring of Shields and Symbols of Hope give block chance and other stats we like. But I could see swapping one out for a healing hands mobility option instead of just using unspecced lunge or shield rush.

Here is the current planner I have: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/B4Ewk9Lo

I could definitely use some help cleaning up passive/skill trees. Perhaps the most build changing matter is whether or not to use Titan’s Heart and go for leech or if we try out the new health regen buffs. For leech we can get it through blessings but depending on how much of our damage is melee vs throwing we’d have to possibly commit 2 blessings to that and that comes at the cost of taking all res from reign of dragons if we want the melee leech. Alternatively we can get the melee leech from void knight, but that’s a lot of points and I’m already not sure what I’d remove for it. We could use a high LP Bleeding Heart for general leech, but late game that means giving up an oracle amulet.
I also wonder whether or not we still want Symbols of Hope if we go the leech route since one of it’s benefits is health regen.

Also, personally, if all else were equal, I think I’d rather have HP regen just so I wasn’t so dependent on hitting things and could be a bit more relaxed with the build.

Other random thoughts/questions:

  • Perfect Riposte in Vengeance makes it so riposted hits can’t crit. I’m not familiar enough with Vengeance to know if you can attack enough with it to be always riposting, thus making the need for crit avoid/reduction less needed. (I’m always a little scared of depending on defenses like that from abilities since what if something randomly hits me while I’m not attacking anything?) Do I drop the reduced damage from crits stuff or just take the point out of this? The skill point also gives base crit chance, but the passive giving reduced damage taken from crits, Master of Arms, is also giving 16 str because I’m also using a 2h weapon. The top end sentinel bases give reduced damage taken from crits, so I guess if I was dropping that it would be for some uniques or something, Not sure what would be worth it. Maybe Peak of the Mountain if I wanted to go the health regen route? For boots there’s Razorfall for exactly the +2 throwing skill levels. Also I wonder if the increased effect of haste works with the block chance given by Forgemaster’s Might?

  • Is Crushing Blows worth it at all? Vengeance is free, the shields we get are free, but I assume the Jav isn’t free since it says we use it and there are nodes that make it cost more. Also is mana sustain gonna be alright with just that mana regen or should I actually be specced into more levels of TIme and Faith so Vengeance can refill my mana?

  • Is the Counterattack passive a real thing? Like it fits with the theme, but I’m always kind of suspicious of those random no skilltree skills. Does this do enough to not take more stats in the base sentinel tree?

  • Are either of the melee/throwing attack crit nodes at the end of the sentinel tree worth it? If my damage is split between the two only one half is gonna benefit and it seems absurd to use enough skill points to get both when I’m already trying to scrap stuff together. But not running crit on a hit based build definitely seems wrong.

  • Anything else?

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Hello, I actually have made a build using a very similar setup, but I opted to go fire. I have ran in to similar issues so I hope my experience with this type of build helps out.

A few issues I can see you’ll run in to:

  1. You will eat your mana almost instantly. I would highly recommend taking “Time and Faith” in the Sentinel passive tree to assist, but I don’t think it would be enough still due to the cost of Javelin. Removing the two points from “Spiked Bombardment” would probably make it way more sustainable. You can also use the ring affixes to get negative throwing mana cost on rings. On top of this I would remove “Crushing Blow” and “Shield Breaker” - Resistance Shred has a max of 10 stacks and you are already getting it from vengeance so this is overkill and a waste of mana - 1 point would be more then sufficient.

  2. I’m not a fan of ring of shields mainly because it pulls aggression and doesn’t give you enough for the points used. If you aren’t blocking or riposting because the shields have aggression you aren’t getting javelin procs from riposte, Retrubtion from Counter Attack, or shield throw retaliations. Changing this would let you remove the 5 points in “Shield Crafter” to use elsewhere as well. I opted to go healing hands to be explained in the next point…

  3. You need more survivability. You need more resistances straight up, even with blessings you need more. Get your endurance close to 60% will greatly increase your EHP. Trade out that chest for Titan Heart as the straight 15% DR is too good to pass up and getting a 2LP Titan Heart shouldn’t be too bad. Next you need a reliable way to sustain your HP as your regen isn’t enough and going Titan Heart it won’t matter anyways. If you take Healing Hands and skill it to be a melee sweeping attack that procs with your vegeance attacks and set it up to heal up front on cast for only 11mp a swing. A little healing effectiveness as you get further will increase this heal. This would require getting a little bit more mana to sustain.

  4. You are way overcapped on block becuase the builder doesn’t take in to account the block you get from Phalanx.

I wish you luck on your build and hope this helps, glad to see someone else had a similar idea!

-Cordecks

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply.

  1. Yeah that makes sense. Getting at least one of those throwing affixes should be high priority. I didn’t know about the res shred only stacking to 10. Good to know.

  2. Huh, I hadn’t really considered that part of Ring of Shields. I was just using them for buffs, but you might be right.

  3. Yeah I got to mess around with getting the balance of things right. That said, I have made a version that goes more full regen with Last Bear’s set crafted on gear. Stack str for regen, armor, and endurance threshold. If this can work I like the idea of regen more than the leech/healing effectiveness stuff. Here is that planner: It was before seeing your suggestions so I have to update with, but gonna do that tomorrow: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/oRWNL44A
    But yeah the 15% DR is quite good. The question is how much healing effectiveness or leech I need to make up for that? If we want leech, which kind is the best to go for? I’m not actually 100% sure which part of our build is contributing most to the damage, the throwing stuff or the melee stuff.

  4. Assuming we want Vengeance to also be doing damage, we get more damage per block chance from the unique, so stacking it up, at least where it’s not costing us something significant, seems good. But maybe I’m overestimating how much of the damage will be from vengeance anyway.

Last question: How do you think it’d be best to approach leveling this assuming I want to minimize respecting? All else equal, I figure going Vengeance first makes sense since we can just use whatever weapon we find whereas going Jav means finding a spear or shield throw means limiting ourselves to shields before we get Forgemaster’s might. Once we get either of the 2 core uniques we can just add that skill into the build pretty smoothly. But I haven’t actually played with Vengeance before, so not sure how it feels to level with.