I got this recently and my first attempt at Void Knight didn’t go so well so was seeking advice on how to build a sentinel to survive and possibly a Void Knight…I DID also discover Ward on my second attempt (a unique dropped) so I am also curious are there other weapons that generate ward if not anyway for me as a Sentinel likely going Void Knight again to build up ward? Thanks in advance!
So while ward is a pretty good defensive layer, Sentinel is surely not the “ward-based” class. While i do think you could make somewhat usefull ward-based Sentinel it is definitly not very beginner friendly and would heavily rely on pure itemization.
So here i will try to give you some basic tips and guidelines.
Firstly VK is the most squishy Mastery of all 3 Sentinel Masteries. It has by far the most offensive capabilities and a very good leech node and decent max health nodes.
The most important thing is to have viable defensives in late-game you need to stack multiple defensive layers. E.g. any combination of Health, Protections, Ward, Glancing Blow, Crit Avoidance.
The important thing in LE compared to (most) other aRPG’s is that Protections do not flat out reduce the damage you take by any %amount, instead each point of protection increases your “effective health” against that certain damage type. This is a bit too deep for more than a basic overview, but you can see the exact formula ingame in the game guide.
The thing i want to point to is, that just stacking Max Health is equally strong as going full protection build. But as i said before, the most effective way would be to stack multiple differenet layers of defense, so for example max health + protections.
As a starting point i would recommend stacking alot of health, together with some protections to give you some overall good effective health.
Then start stacking glancing blow affixes on your gear. Glancing Blows reduce the damage you take by 50%, which can apply to everything except DoT effects.
And in LE it is fairly easyto reach 100% Glancing Blow. If you getting really into lategame Crit Avoidance also really helps to avoid alot of the spikey damage and “1-shots”.
The “World Eater” Node within the VK is an excelent source of pretty decent life leech, depending on your build.
In case you wanna use a shield i would also recommend at least spend 5 points in Pala’s Tree for the “Honour” Node and 8 Points within the Forgeguard’s Tree for the “Steel Aegis” Node.
Those 13 skill points give you 13% block chance, which makes using s shield alot more consistent.
If you have more detailed questions, feel free to ask. Or if you wanna have deeper build/skill combination tips.
I wasn’t too far into the game I had reached I wanna say 35 or so but kept dying and when I tried out the Monolith well lets just say I didn’t have the best experience ha ha it tore me apart. I started over as I figured I probably messed up somewhere along the line…I was planning on going shield and have been building towards that…Void Knight attracted me as I do enjoy the Dark Knight type class (IE Dark element/Dark Magic themed melee) a LOT though to be honest my just charging in full bore without research probably didn’t help either. I was thinking of focusing at the start in Sentinel on mostly defensive stuff (The shield line and things like that.) And using Void Knight’s offense to help me kill things fast while being as tanky as possible. What’s the earliest I can find Glancing blow shard’s? And as for the crafting is it better to craft up gear as long as you can? I will say the crafting and itemizations did confuse me somewhat though I do like them.
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@Stormquake got a good guide here. It’s mainly for Warpath but the build stacks health and leech, so you can take away the key concepts here. Stacking prots is also good but much harder as a new player.
To be honest i am not 100% sure, but i guess they can drop at any level like most other regular shards, they are a little bit mor uncommon though.
Just look out for gear that has any affixes you are interested in and use Runes of Shattering for it to gains it’s properties as affix shards.(You can also buy 4x Runes of Shattering) at the vendors every 15min
I didn’t wanted to give you exact outlines as i find it quite uninteresting as a new player to follow strict guidlines. Not sure what type of player you are and how much do you like to experiment and try things out yourself.
All i will say here is that you might also want to consider using 1-2 skills that have some defensive/utility nodes within it’s spec tree, that further boosts your defensive capabilities along with the gear affixes of course.
Some basic outlines i would recommend without giving you a defined build would be:
Try Vengance with the “Bolster” Node in conjuction with 2 additional riposte attacks, which will basically leads to permanentuptime of “Bolster”
Devouring Orbs “Abyssal Juggernaut” Node, depending on how oyu wanna use it it can be a purly defensive/utility skill with extra duration, movementspeed and cast speed
Lunge’s “Forge On” + “Unstoppable” Node
Anomaly’s whole “Time Bubble” Segment in the bottom right corner of the skill tree for insane leech and some other offensive benefits (That skill comes pretty late within the VK’s tree, so you probably havn’t even unlocked it but give it a try)
There are plenty of other options as well, but the easiest and safest way for sentinel is probably goign Vengance as a primary attack with some cooldown skills in between.
In case you are interested in using Vengance you can also take the Sentinel Passive Node “Time And Faith” which gives you insane health and mana on hit.
If you want more detailedd tips or build ideas, feel free to hit me up or browse the forums, there are various different build guides out there than you can try to replicate or at least get some inspiration how they manage their survivability.
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Thanks Callizer I’ll check it out why is stacking protections harder for new players than health and leech? To heavy, I had been considering using Bolster as I was trying out Vengeance. There is something I’m curious about I have noticed some classes using abilities from other masteries like a Paladin using Void Knight devouring orb (Saw it on the ladder) can you get some of those by investing in the tree’s? For now ward is working out though I think mostly cause I lucked out and got two idols that give me ward upon being struck I think one is 10% chance to get 30 other is 9% chance to get 30 combined with that 1h sword its been working but eventually I will have to switch weapons.
“Of Deflection” is the first glancing blow affix you will encounter with a minimum level of 30, the much improved “Enduring” affix will start showing up after lvl 50. The Enduring prefix “only” requires 5 slots of t4 to hit 100% or 4 slots worth of t5.
Edit: As long as the skills are below the mid-point of the non-mastered passive tree, then yes, you can use them, you just need to put the relevant amount of points into the relevant passive tree.
Alright thanks I was wondering…I wonder if that means I could make a void based Paladin or Void based Forge Guard…I’m assuming by 5 slots of T4 you mean I’d need T4 on 5 pieces of gear correct?
Void based forge guard is surely possible, several builds exist at the moment for that (check boardman21 posts here on the class forums or his youtube channel, he has plenty of awesome builds)
alot of the sentinel builds are void based
Correct. Each item has 4 affix slots you can get/craft affixes on to.
highest tier on each item is Tier 5.
But you’ll spend alot of time in the end game (monolith/arena) to get full tier 5 items (with the right stats).
Due to RNG crafting (chances to break), you’ll be spending alot of shards on them.
Hence why it’s better to first go for Tier 4 on the stats you want (higher chance to actually get them without breaking).
I’ve tried my hand at crafting some but hasn’t gone well anytime I reach 80-85% chance of fracture its more like an insta fracture ha ha. That does lead me to this question is it better to craft good drops or get white named items and craft them up?
both
For instance you can get an item with 3 rolls (2 really good rolls, and 1 useless roll) on it, in that case you can try RNG removing 1 of them and hope the 2 remaining ones are the one you want.
Also you can add additional crafting shards (to reduce instability caused by your crafting - glyphs of stability - and to reduce fracture - chance - glyphs of the guardian).
Start the first few crafts with instability reduction and afterwards fracture reduction to have more chance of reaching T4 and T5)
also… don’t forget to pick up items with affixes that you want to shatter (even if the item itself is trash).
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What I am doing when starting new:
Choose the main damage skill and build gear around that skill with collecting items with stats that match the skilltag
For protections: As long as I play through the story I take general protections. I use Elemental protections (lighning, fire, cold), Vitality (necrotic, void, poison) and armor. I don’t care for specific protections agains a single damage type. They grand higher values, but at the beginning it’s too hard to balance all the different protections. And while going through campaign you change your gear a lot.
I am looking for items with 2 stats that fit my build and try to max them out through crafting whenever I can.
So you have 4 things you mainly look for: Three general protections (armor, vitality and elemental) and one damage type (e.g. physical, melee, void,… depends on your main damage skill). Every stat that fits your build in addition to those mentioned above is a bonus (for example stun chance or void protection).
Also I use leech very often on my gloves.
I’ve been running so far with Vengeance and Hammer throw (got the void aura on hammers,got the void abilities for vengence,1 extra riposte and working on the one that reduces damage done to me think I have 3 points there) Between Ward,The healing from that sentinel ability that add’s healing and mana gain on Vengeance,Rive,and Smite as well as using Juggernaut stance I’ve been doing well so far lot better than my first attempt that’s for sure…Haven’t died yet (Knock on wood)
I do have a question I just came up with…Do any of the Paladin or Forge Guard skills for that matter have nodes that convert their damage to Void or add void damage to them? I’m getting close to the point where I choose so wanted to know. Skills like Judgement,Sigils,Molten strike,etc.
The very first skill in VK passive tree in the middle (not ingame right now) converts Smite’s Damage to Void. The 2 follow up nodes also add flat void damage to either spells or attacks.
There is also a Idol that converts shield throw damage to void.
As far as i am aware those are the only pure void converts. There are some other sentinel skills that have added void damage nodes though
Yeah smite was one I used but I was meaning more the other masteries skills given I’ve been told you can go Void damage on the other’s was trying to figure how it’d be done and see if what I wanted to do would be easier being done with one of the other two.
I think the “best” main damage skills for a void damage focused build, except the “obvious” one “Earasing Strike”, would be either Shield Throw with the Convert Idol or Warpath, since warpath has alot of good void nodes.
Basically all the other skills don’t have very good void damage support build in, so going void damage mainly would be alot more gear dependened on those other skills.
Workign with flat void damage added and % increased void damge you basically can to any skill anyway. Question is how effective that is.
Smite for example is a really really good utility skill with loads of nice nodes, but lacks damage as a main damage skill. One possible build you could try is Shield Throw with Void convert idol and use the other idols that make shield throw trigger smite, just one of many suggestions.
And well as i said obviously Earasing Strike is an insane Void Damage Skill, either as main damage skills or just as soem specilisaed AoE or Boss Killer(Earasign Strikes Skill SPec Tree really has everythign you would want it to have)
Because there are 7 protections to take care of. Set Elemental Protection (Protective) exists but there’s no such thing as Set Armour or Set Necrotic/Poison/Void. Yes you can stack Vitality but remember that you also need GB and CA. Crafting items with 4 high tier affixes are not easy.
It’s just easier to craft Set Health (Leviathan’s) and get leech from passive tree.