You like tankiness and facetanking ?
You like high mobility ?
You like awesome looking effects ?
You like having very good DPS (for boss single target and trash mobs ) ?
You like to feel like a badass ?
This builds is made for you
This is a Hammer Throw build using the node Disintegrating Aura to deal a LOT of single target and area of effect damage. Weāre a caster-melee build that facetank anything that the game throw at us.
We use Volatile Reversal to be able to spam like crazy our Hammers Throw and debuff the enemies.
Vengeance brings tankiness (36% damage reduction for 2 sec) and flat mana gain on use (so we can even spam it in the air to gain mana back very quickly, donāt do that if there is mobs nearby tho, hit them instead, you need this tankiness after all ^^ ) .
Lunge, despite itās nerf in 0.7.8, it remains the best mobility skill for Sentinel.
Devouring Orb is our sustain machine, it gives us a lot of Damage boost and a lot of Health gain on Hit thanks to the node Regenerator in the Forge Guard tree.
Pros
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Tanky, very good survability vs hits damage
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Very good single target and area of effect damage
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Disintegrating Aura looks S I C K (yes, itās a pros ^^ Being stylish is important )
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Budget friendly and internet connection friendly (not very laggy).
Cons
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āNon hit damageā (so, all Damage Over Time) are problematic because they are not proccing Glancing Blow or the passive Mastery of Forge Guard, so all dots damage can be deadly if you donāt have Sunforged Greathelm and youāre facing huge dots damage in Arena or at high end of Monolith.
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One Shot damageā¦As the name suggest, it will kill you (theyāre almost non existent except if youāre at very high waves of Arena or with crazy monolith modifiers).
Forge Guard passive Mastery bonus can reduce the damage you take by a maximum of 30% + Glancing Blow that reduce by 50% the damage of the hits you take + Vengeance on top of it that add +36% damage reduction means that we need an incredible hard/high hit to kill us (iām not even taking into account the armor and protections here ).
Only crit hits can kill us (except the mortar attacks of the overtuned Siege Golems), thatās why critical avoidance is a must have as well.
Edit : This Build is updated for 0.7.8 and is stronger than it previously was !
Tested and approved in SSF arena +200 waves ^^
The Build is performing very well at high wave of arena (200) with bad gear :
PS about the lag in the video (in particular at the start) : i have a internet connection of 300ko/sec atm, as you can imagine, itās very bad and very slow, this is why sometimes you can see FPS drops in the video (iām also playing on a 5 years old laptopā¦ ^^).
Arena wave 115
Video of the build in 0.7.7, old video, the build has now a lot more damage, tankiness and no mana issues
For mastery, we pick Forge Guard. Why ? Because Void Knight is a glass cannon right now in 0.7.8 (it will deal more damage than Forge Guard for sure, maybe 50% more, but it will be 5 times squishierā¦ No points of having a lot of damage if you have to run away from everything because everything one shot you).
Paladin has bad synergies with the skills that weāre going to use.
So, first things first :
The Skills
Devouring Orb
Our first skill is Devouring Orb, put this one on auto-cast thanks to NUM PAD (there is some tutorial on how to do it on You Tube).
Devouring Orb is our sustain machine, it makes us much more durable thanks to the awesome passive node in Forgeguard called REGENERATOR.
For each hit and blocks, we get back 16 HPā¦ Thanks to devouring orb with the node Abyssal Orb, we hit A LOT, which means that we get A LOT of health gain on hit.
This tree is while leveling with the skill :
And this tree is for endgame, the node Abyssal Guggernaut gives us a huge elemental protection boost with devouring orb active and for that we had to give up some nodes into mana efficiency and cast speed and in Dark Torrent (weāll have less orbs and hits because of it, but itās worth it), makes the skill a bit more clunky to use but makes us a lot tankier vs elementals and void damages :
PS : the 2nd tree listed for endgame of DO increase our mana consumption by a lot compared to the other one, be mindful of that
Volatile Reversal
We use it to get mana backs quickly and throw away our hammers mindlessly, itās possible to swap it for Ring Of Shields if youāre playing Hardcore (even tho ROS is bad in my opinion).
It also increase the damage of Disintegrating Aura by 90% thanks to the 2 nodes Harbinger of Dust and Time Rifts
Lunge
Our mobility skill, it makes you immune to enemies damage while lunging (so you can theoratically dodge any telegraphed attacks), you can use it twice in a row with a 2 second cooldown, it gives you a lot of armorā¦ I just love this movement skill <3
Vengeance
We use vengeance to have that sweet 36% damage reduction for 2 sec and gain some void essence to deal more dmg. Attack speed help in the tree as well, to gain a bit of animation frames and more flat mana gain thanks to Time and Faith node.
Hammer Throw
The main damage source of our build, we use Disintegrating Aura with it to destroy our enemies. We use Zeal to further increase the damage of Disintegrating Aura.
We also want that the hammers to spirals around us, thanks to the node Iron Spiral, it improves our single target damage by a lot.
Disintegrating aura scales with 3 damage types : Void damage, Damage over time and Throwing Attack damage. Global damage increase apply on just one stat modifier (Global damage increase will not triple your dps on Disintegrating Aura, thatās too sad ).
We also donāt want to invest into the Hammer Vortex node, because when we Hammer Throw, we stand where we are (vs rare mobs/bosses).
Therefore, Hammer Vortex is useless on top of costing us +1 point in the skill tree and +6 mana per hammer throw (which is a huge nerf to our dps : we canāt spam our hammers as much as before ).
Next, the Idols
Idols
We want to use Annihilating Huge Rahyeh Idol of Decay, because each idols can gives us with perfect rolls +150% damage on Disintegrating Aura (+60% from global damage increase of Devouring Orb casted recently and +90% from Void damage over time).
And we have the Passive points :
To resume the passive points :
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For the Sentinel tree, we want damage and block chance (and a bit of armor)
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For Void Knight, we only want to invest 15 points to get Devouring Orb, pick what you like, i fancy flat life, void life leech.
Thanks to Llama8 testing, we now know that Future Strike procs regenerator passive node, so go get it when you have the points for it ! -
For Forge Guard, the 2 keys passive points are Regenerator, the most important node of this build. It gives us a LOT of Life Gain on hit which makes us even more tanky.
Then we have Rallying Block which gives you tons of armor and protections (weāre talking about thousands or more hereā¦). Once youāre done with these, work your way towards block chance and global damage increase nodes (Retaliation and Tide of battle nodes gives you in total +450% damage increased, not bad for 20 only points ^^). -
For Paladin, we only want block chance
PS : If you want to spec into other passives later on in late game (level +85), there is 3 options :
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You can put all your remaining points into the Node Powerful Throw in the Forge Guard tree, it gives you per point +7% dmg on disintegrating aura and +5% ele protections when hit, itās obviously very good.
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Itās also possible to invest point into the node Battle Hardened , it will increase your armor up to +150% when you get hitā¦ Armor is really good in this build because if you got the right gear for it, necro and poison damage will be dealt to your armor, and itās much easier to stack armor than necrotic and poison protections.
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Finally, the node Infinite Bulwark will be very good if you want to have a very agressive and active playstyle, if youāre using all the times your potions to increase your damage by +300% thanks to the node Tide Of Battle.
When you use a potion, this node will give you for 4 sec a buff that will gives you +200% armor and +200% increase chance to find a potion ! Itās very good as well, but situational, and this node is more for players that want to be very active, if you prefer a good passive buff, then the 2 previous node quoted would be better
The Gear
We want on gear DEFENSES, protections, health, block chance, glancing blow.
Only crit hits can kill us, thatās why critical avoidance is a must have as well.
The big part of our damage comes from Idols, passive nodes tree in Forge Guard and Volatile Reversal.
Our build is weak to 2 things : One Shot Damage (which are almost non existent except if youāre at very high waves of Arena or high Timelines of Monolith) and Damage Over Time (Dot) effects because they donāt count as āhitā and therefore goes through Glancing Blow (Glancing Blow donāt work vs Dots) and Dots donāt trigger Forge Guard Mastery passive that can give us up to 30% damage reduction.
This is why the Best in Slot items of our build mitigate the Dots :
PS : A rare helmet with all the rare new suffixes will be superior to Sunforged Greathhelm, but you need to be rich or lucky to get those
The patch 0.7.8 also introduces new suffixes exclusive to sentinel which are incredibly strong:
The prefix 'āBallistaā is also very good, it reduce the mana cost of Hammer Throw by 3 and thatās why itās a nice quality of life for our mana consumption (which will be huge in endgame).
Other good items, especially for leveling or if you miss Sunforged Greathelm or a rare helmet and body armour crafted with poison and necrotic damage taken as physical damage :
For the weapon youāll want a Wand with -3 spell mana cost, Void Damage and Damage Over Time, the rest can be protections
Leveling
Youāll level up with Hammer Throw, itās a good skill even for leveling, take iron spiral and the extra hammer node early on. Invest 15 points early into Void Knight to get Devouring Orb then RUSH the Regenerator node in Forge Guard, after that you wonāt have any problem with your HP
Then take block chance in Paladin an Forge Guard and invest into damage .
My very bad SSF gear
Donāt take this gear as good, itās bad, but it can give you an idea of what you should aim for if youāre broke like iām ^^
I wanted to thanks Mishaās insights on the Sentinels class (go check his review, itās super good : Misha's Sentinel Guide 0.7.7 - #2 by boardman21 ) and Llama8 which created another build centered around Shield Throw and smite procs (build is here : 0.7.8 Llama's (wave 280+) Forge Guard Void Shield Throw build that will kill your FPS as fast as it kills mobs )
Take care and thanks you for reading this build