[1.1.3.0] Vanquisher Fire Sentinel, semi-beginner friendly and practically farmable

Hi folks,

This is not really a build post but more like a report of what I have been doing as a newbie player since FG release - but any suggestions on the build will be greatly appreciated!

Introduction

Why I think it's semi-beginner friendly / who might benefit from this post most

I think there are a lot of casual players like me who has 2~3 Lv.100 chars and 1~2 stash pages of purple gears, and feel kinda lost of direction because:

  • already have sth equal to / slightly better than those blue-and-faction-gear beginner friendly builds
  • find crucible / shattered realm difficult to farm efficiently and want to improve
  • but donā€™t have enough purple gears to make any of those 6min crucible / SR75+ monster builds - or even get slightly closer to them

I call people like me semi-beginner (not sure if this is the right term), and this is basically a from semi-beginner to semi-beginner post.

In my case I had a trash gear Spellbinder which finished FG ultimate in ~30 deaths lol, a far-more-reliable Perdition aegis Sentinel similar to malawiglennā€™s build, and 1.5 stash pages of purple gears which, curse my RNG, half of them are lightning and pet gears that I donā€™t use.

I could clear roguelike dungeons in about 15 mins with my aegis sentinel, but with only ~1h/day time on average for farming (= 4 SoT/BoC runs per day), I felt it would take eternity to actually get an Eternity relic for my binder. Which is somewhat frustrating.

Then I saw x1x1x1x2ā€™s skater templar, and realised that by adapting it to sentinel it might be sth practical for me to aim for (except for the Eternity relic :roll_eyes:) - hence all the farming & testing & this post as a report.

Farming process for this build is very practical for semi-beginners / casuals, and the resulting toon you get, though probably not as good as the original skater templar, is strong enough to breeze through ~SR 40 without death, and is super fun to play. (Sometimes youā€™ll get overly excited and need to calm down a little bit in order not to die stupidly.)

Update: it can do SR 75-76 with full blue gears except the Vanquisher set and MI offhand. Apparently I underestimated the power of the Vanquisher Sentinel a lot when writing the above paragraph.

I hope this post can help you if youā€™re a semi-beginner / casual player like me and in a similar situation.

Build 1: My first setup :running_man:

Screenshot with permanent buffs, Blood of Dreeg and Ascension.

20190523005606_1

My first setup (>>> Grimtool link <<<)
Itā€™s basically an adaption of x1x1x1x2ā€™s skater templar to sentinel, with the gear I found during farming the Vanquisher set.

Why sentinel you ask?

Well because as I said I only have a spellbinder and a sentinel, and obviously spellbinder doesnā€™t have Vireā€™s Might. :crazy_face:

Seriously speaking, comparing to templar, our sentinel lacks:

  • Flat RR from CT bonus of Vanquisher set
  • Mirror
  • Maiven (% damage absorption, CC resist), nullification

But we also get:

  • % RR from Curse of Frailty
  • Blood of Dreeg (healing, 12% physical resist)
  • OA shred from Pox+Wasting

So I think itā€™s a good tradeoff, we just need to change some gears and devotions to get what it lacks.

Comment on gears

These gears are chosen mostly because thatā€™s the best one Iā€™ve got at the moment, so they can still be improved. I think Iā€™ll be able to at least improve the offhand and the rings after some more farming. Also I think Volcanic Stride is the skill that deals most damage in this build (see gameplay section below) so maybe I should try to aim for 22/12 (currently itā€™s 19/12).

Vanquisherā€™s set: obvious choices

Offhand: x1x1x1x2 recommends the suffix with physical resist, but unfortunately I havenā€™t got one yet. Will probably farm one later because it really looks good.

Update: youā€™ll definitely want a better roll on CDR more than anything here, I can even say that having 18% CDR and irrelevant affixes is better than 13% CDR and godly affixes. Just consider that 5% CDR as a 1.2s Ascension CDR and youā€™ll realise how important it is.

Weapon: x1x1x1x2 has some other suggestions, but this weapon has +2 VM and burn damage to VM, and also has +4% CDR. I donā€™t have Eternity so I think more %CDR will be nice, hence the choice. With a 18% CDR offhand Iā€™ve got 30% CDR in total.

Belt: we donā€™t have Maiven for CC resist, so I chose this Ordas MI so that I can at least cap stun resist when Ascension is on. If youā€™re unlucky with Vanquisher hat farming like me youā€™ll have tons of this MI. Iā€™m sort of in love with this MI and have collected half a stash page of them lol. If you can get stun resist from other gears then you can use Crimson Lotus as x1x1x1x2 suggested in his templar build for more damage.

Gloves: to use that offhand we need 724 spirit, but compared to templar we get less spirit from mastery and also donā€™t have that sweet +25% spirit from Inner Focus, so I chose this gloves (and the boots) to avoid putting too much points into spirit. When I farmed roguelike dungeons Iā€™ve got 8 pairs of this gloves and chose the best roll with 5% spirit and 5% DA.

Boots: Mainly for +spirit, good DA & great physical resist proc, and that entrapment resist means no traps can ever stop you from skating. It should be renamed to Footpads of the Mad Skaters. (Actually youā€™ll still get trapped because resist caps at 80%)

Pants: +2 Volcanic Stride and physical resist (mine is 7%). With boots proc I get 50% physical resist, which I think is pretty good. An alternative choice is Tranquil Mind which gives you a lot of +spirit and +OA, but unfortunately I donā€™t have a spare one.

I think Kuba MI are also nice because of +OA and +3 to Tectonic Shift. I really want to try sth like Thunderstruck Kuba pants of Psyche which might solve the spirit and stun resist problems at the same time. You can farm Kuba during Ancient Grove runs / Ugdenblooms farming, see the farming section below.

Rings: just random fire rings I have atm.

Medal: we donā€™t have mirror so I choose mark of divinity to increase the survivability, but up to SR 40 I found it seldom procs so maybe I can change it to some +fire damage stuffs.

Relic: I do want an Eternity to increase the uptime of Ascension and devotion procs (discuss later), but I donā€™t have it, so picked the best one I have atm. It also has +spirit which is always welcome.

About the rings & amulet augments: Osyrā€™s temper gives more OA/DA than survivorā€™s ingenuity (for this build itā€™s 3191OA/2766DA vs 3103OA/2734DA with Blood of Dreeg & Ascension), though lose +60% to all damage. I think 90 OA is big so itā€™s worthwhile?

Devotions

I went greedy and picked 3 fire procs here (Meteor, Fissure, Phoenix) and we also have Eldritch fire and Elemental storm for RR. We do have enough skills to proc all these stuffs (Judgement 100% procs Elemental storm, Curse of Fraility procs Meteor, Pox procs Fissure efficiently against crowds, I want Phoenixā€™s flat damage absorption as often as possible so bound it to VM). However Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s a good idea to bind Eldritch fire to Guardian of Empyrion.

I also picked Harp and Chariot since it lacks OA/DA but have decent CDR. And this is also the reason of me wanting an Eternity. Harp also solves mana problem.

Stats & skills

With Eternity relic you need to put 28 (maybe 29 if unlucky with the rolls) to use that offhand. The excessive spirit in the GT link is due to +3% spirit from the offhand and the additional +spirit from Iskandra relic. Iā€™m still hoping for getting an Eternity soon :rolleyes:

As for the skills nothing much need to say, just that I found 15/12 Tectonic Shift helps when spamming skating in very short distance (youā€™ll actually do this often, see gameplay section below).

Build 2: A more polished setup :motorcycle:

When I tried to go deeper in SR, I found some issues with Build 1, so I tried several times to polish it. This is the setup I used to climb up to SR 75:
More polished setup (>>> Grimtool link <<<)

Explanation to the changes

When I made the Build 1 I was thinking about a caster build with a kiting playstyle, so the survivability is basically based on (1) superior mobility provided by Vanquisher, (2) pots and Blood of Dreeg healing, (3) procs like Chariot and Mark of Divinity.

However, as I went deeper in SR, it turned out that these are still not sufficient. Yes mobility is great with this build, but the game engine of GD mostly makes sure youā€™ll get hit by Grava, Iron Maiden, Fabiusā€™ charge attack / shadow strike, and thereā€™re also a lot of bosses with dangerous ranged attacks, so youā€™ll get hurt anyway, and soon run out of all (2) and (3).

Thus this Build 2 is more focused on life leeching (LL) for sustain than Build 1. Most changes can be seen in devotion: Rhowanā€™s Crown is changed to Revenant, mainly for its 6% ADCTH node, and Magi is dropped for Bat which also provides some LL. I even bind Bat proc to VM in order to let it proc as often as possible.

Skills: more weights are put into Vireā€™s Might & Tectonic Shift for more efficient LL, and Haven for more HP, so that I can play more aggressively.

As for the gears,

  • Belt is changed to Crimson Lotus for +1 Oathkeeper skills and some Acid -> Fire conversion, this conversion provides some flat acid -> fire damage provided by Blood of Dreeg.
  • Pants are changed to Kuba MI for +3 Tectonic Shift. I happened to have one with Thunderstruck so I used it, but actually I want one with more +HP and DA, those stun resists can partly obtained by changing Eel and Order Crossroad to Scarab in devotion.
  • Boots are changed to Galewind for +2 Vireā€™s Might and +OA. But after some tests I find those trap resist on Grey Magi very useful against Bennā€™Jahr, so I always keep it in my inventory, and if I died in a boss room with Benn I change the boots to Grey Magi until I clear that level.
  • Mark of Divine is dropped for Coven Mark of the Arcane for +2 Volcanic Stride and OA. To compensate for the loss of a circuit breaker, I changed the helm augment to Prismatic Diamond.

Note: most of this post is written when I was using Build 1, so when I say ā€œthis buildā€ in other sections I probably mean Build 1, unless it is clear from the context.

Build 3: Super cheap G2 setup :kick_scooter:

This is a setup with all blue gears except Vanquisher and double-yellow MI Offhand.
G2 setup (>>> Grimtool link <<<)

I decided to make this build after reading about the new definition of G2 tag in the compendium:

Definition of G2 build

The main purpose of this build is to support my claim that it is semi-beginner friendly and practically farmable. When you finish farming skeleton dungoens you should have far better gear than this, so you donā€™t need to stick to every piece of gears in order to make a good skater. And yes I said a good skater because I finished SR 75-76 with this build without aggro abusing.

Some details about Build 3

This build was theorycrafted based on Build 2, they have the same ideas in mind, and thus have the same devotion map and similar skill point distribution.

The actual theorycrafting process was very simple in fact. I searched for blue gears that give OA and/or DA in Grimtools, if there are multiple choices I chose the one with skill bonus to Oathkeeper skills. The weapon was picked almost purely due to it not needing cunning (unlike some swords / daggers). Then changed some components to fix the resists, then finally fill the augments.

It was made in like 10-15 mins, so I didnā€™t expect this build to be as good as Build 2, but when I tested it in SR I was astonished by its performance. I actually didnā€™t feel there is any significant difference between Build 2 and Build 3, despite Build 3 using tons of blue gears and a far weaker relic. I even feel its survivability slightly better than Build 2 due to having extra HP.

Performance of the build

Build 1 (outdated)

Main campaign general farming

Skater builds are arguable the most efficient farmers for general farming in main campaign (for e.g. farming specific MIs, ugdenblooms, or treasure troves) and probably roguelike dungeons, because 90% of the time is spent in travelling in this kind of farming, and being able to spam VM reduces such time by a huge portion.

That being said I have to mention that this build might be not very suitable for farming Ancient Grove, because fighting Gargabol 2nd phase with all those fissures and fire beams around can be a painful experience, or maybe not so painful because when you die you die very quickly :roll_eyes: I think that fight is actually more difficult than most SR 65 boss rooms for this build.

Crucible

Iā€™m completely newbie to crucible and actually have never played gladiator so Iā€™m not sure. Several days ago I just tried Aspirant 150-170 with this build and didnā€™t have much problem but I guess that doesnā€™t mean much.

Shattered realm

Today I just finished SR 30~40 without death, which is a big improvement compared to my previous Perdition aegis sentinel because with that one I needed to kite bosses a lot and still died sometimes in ~SR 15. With this skater I could clear SR 40 boss room faster and safer than aegis doing SR 15. I guess SR 45~50ish should be fine with this build.

Not sure about deeper shards though, actually Iā€™m a little bit worried about the boss rooms because I still havenā€™t figured out how to lure only one boss and kill it with skating. That being said, I think being able to consistently farm SR 40~50ish is good enough for a semi-beginner build.

Iā€™ll probably update this section later when I have the time to play more.

Update: SR 45 is fine, just went from 40 to 45 without death. Boss rooms have been pretty easy so far, just lured them altogether and let them chase me and get burned to death. Mark of Divinity circuit breaker saved my life about 5 times so I think itā€™s worth it.

Update2: Pushed to 65 and can confirm this build can reliably farm SR 65-66, have done about 15 times and most cleared in time. Hard bosses are Grava, Kaisan, Mad Queen, and some other general Chthonian bosses with high fire resists and annoying skills.

I must admit that with this build fighting through SR 46~59 tiny boss rooms are quite painful, though it is still doable with enough patience. As long as you reach SR 60 it will become a looooot easier.

Build 2:

Crucible: Gladiator 150-170 9min 22s under 4 buffs 0 banner

That result was actually my first ever Gladiator 150-170 run so I bet it can be far better in the hand of a good crucible player.

SR 75 viable

I managed to push from SR 65-70 then 70-75 with Build 2, both in the first attempt, without shrines / buff potions / aether clusters. It wasnā€™t finished in time, mostly due to I died too much to Fabius, but this is my first SR 75 clear ever so Iā€™m super happy with the result :laughing:

Considering that I failed twice to push to SR 70 with Build 1 (both failed to clear a boss room after ~1h of challenging), this indicates a remarkable improvement in general survivability, though I must admit it may also have to do with mutators and boss combinations.

Screenshot for SR 75 clear. Yay!

Update: more SR 75-76 runs indicate that this build is still not reliable enough for SR 75-76 farming (can take a lot of time against some bosses in FG town map, also youā€™ll get killed by Gargabol in two successive strikes etc so playing it requires a lot of concentration). Therefore, if you want to farm SR then I recommend just do 65-66 runs.

Build 3 (the G2 one):

SR 75 viable

Gameplay

Gameplay video (SR 65-66 run):

The setup used in the video is something between Build 1 and Build 2, but the general playstyle is the same.

I also recommend seeing x1x1x1x2ā€™s skater templar videos, because the general playstyle is similar and he is a far better pilot than me.

Some specific topics about gameplay:

Short-distance zigzagging & face skating

Different to x1x1x1x2 binding VM to keyboard, I bind Vireā€™s Might to RMB, set ā€œForced movementā€ to Alt and always hold it down while skating. By doing so Iā€™m able to zigzag right behind and before one enemy to maximise single-target DPS when needed.
20190524230352_1
I think due to Volcanic Stride this does more DPS than simply spamming VM at face (i.e. VM without moving, I see x1x1x1x2 did this quite a lot in his crucible video). I did some test on hitting the training dummy in Conclave of the three with Build 1, and the result is that without using other active skills, by purely using VM I could ā€œkillā€ the dummy with short-distance zigzagging in 44s, while by face skating it was 93s, so it seems that Volcanic Stride is the real boss here and face skating may be not a good idea.

If you really want to do face skating, then getting Tectonic Shift to 22/12 may significantly increase your DPS. I did some test and the result shows that with 30% CDR and 12, 15, 18 and 22 Tectonic Shift, you do VM 60 times in about 44, 40, 36, 32 sec respectively. So going from 12/12 to 22/12 itā€™s a 37.5% increase in VM frequency, though it is still far worse than zigzagging (93/1.375 = 67 > 44, and you actually canā€™t reach 67 because a lot of damage are dots). I personally donā€™t do face skating but do short-distance zigzagging a lot, so Iā€™m happy with 15/12 (18/12 in Build 2).

Note: if you bind VM to RMB and skate in super short distance (like 0~2m) youā€™ll sometimes do normal attack between two VMs, which I find annoying and somewhat dangerous during tough fights. If you bind VM to keyboard then you donā€™t have this kind of problem, but itā€™ll be more difficult to keep ā€œForced movementā€ at the same time.

My workaround is to do the both, put it into RMB and also bind it to a key, and choose the one that is suitable to the current situation.

Edit: x1x1x1x2ā€™s explanation about face skating.

I completely agree that zigzagging needs far more cursor movement and attention, and perhaps is just not practical in crucible when thereā€™re just so many things happening at the same time.

Edit2: I just realised that face skating maximises life leech efficiency, so this is sometimes much safer than zigzagging when you can tank.

Edit3, after clearing SR 75 with Build 2: so Build 1 actually doesnā€™t provide enough LL for short-distance zigzagging / face skating in SR70+, and even with Build 2 you donā€™t want to do face skating unless youā€™re quite sure that boss wonā€™t kill you. And just never try to do face skating with this build when you are in the attack range of more than 1 bosses.

Casting other skills (Build 1)

As mentioned in the devotion section, this build has a lot of skills besides skating ā€“ Curse of Frailty (Meteor), Pox (Fissure), Judgement (Elemental storm), and sometimes I also use Pet Attack to let guardians hit specific target.

When having an easy fight, I just randomly push 1~3 of those buttons then skate brainlessly, and enemies die pretty quickly.

When having a tough fight (e.g. aggroā€™d all bosses in SR boss rooms), I cast everything from afar and keep skating to keep a healthy distance from those bosses. Theyā€™ll chase you and get hurt by Volcanic Stride and all the procs. No need to get into melee range, unless you see one boss isolated from others - then it might be a good chance to use the short-distance skating mentioned above to kill it quickly.

I did this for SR 30~40 boss rooms (because I really donā€™t know how to lure and fight one-by-one with this build) and find it pretty safe. Very often I actually donā€™t know what killed those bosses because they died off-screen :rolleyes: but I guess itā€™s mainly Volcanic Stride.

Edit: following x1x1x1x2ā€™s advice, bound Meteor to CoF and removed DEE. This is really a huge improvement in QoL as well as safety.

Playing with Build 2 / 3

I play Build 2 / 3 more aggressively than Build 1, however it is not still tanky enough to reliably tank 2+ bosses in SR 70+ boss rooms (though for some weak combination you actually can do that). So most of the time I still just skate around the boss room and try to keep distance.

However, when I see only one boss is getting close enough (mainly due to difference in move speed and/or path being blocked by mobs summoned by Zantarin), Iā€™ll use Ascension and try to do as much damage as possible to that boss before other bosses come close, kill it if possible. Unless that boss has some crazy shotgun skills, this playstyle is pretty safe in SR 70~75 even if you aggro all bosses in the FG town map (like I do every time).

Some notes on fighting bosses in SR

The following only applies if you always aggro all bosses at the sametime like me :roll_eyes:

  • Grava: itā€™s the most painful fight, still hasnā€™t figure out how to deal with him more efficiently. Iā€™m even thinking about getting some skill disruption resistance just to make the fight easier. Currently I just keep running away and wait for him getting himself killed by Volcanic Stride.
  • Alex, Valdaran, Reaper, Kuba: if you donā€™t mind the time just keep running away and theyā€™ll chase you / keep teleporting into Volcanic Stride until they die. And they actually die pretty quickly even in this way (esp. Reaper).
  • Benn: when you see him with Build 2, see if you can change the boots to Grey Magi or not, it will make the fight a lot safer when other bosses are around. And also use Pet Attack to let Guardians trigger those Obsidian Clusters.
  • Moos: only fight him when Ascension is up. Or more precisely, NEVER FIGHT HIM WITHOUT ASCENSION
  • Kaisan: keep distance with those Eldritch Shards, skater builds have the mobility to do that so no need to try to destroy them.
  • Fabius & Iron Maiden: these two are the ones that donā€™t do much by their own, but when paired with some other bosses they seem to be able to do significant burst damage. Just donā€™t get too greedy and try to fight them 1vs1.
  • Zantarin: hey, thanks a lot for summoning those skeletons! Theyā€™re like free HP pots and also sometimes block big bosses, make it easier to fight 1vs1.

A guide to actually getting all gears for this build

This section explains why it is semi-beginner friendly and practically farmable, and provide details about how to actually obtain all the gears you need for this build.

Why it is practically farmable

My definition of ā€œpractically farmable for semi-beginnerā€ is that with 1h/day farming time you can get all the gears within 1 month (=30h) with high probability, assuming that you already have a toon equal to or slightly better than a blue-and-green/faction beginner build.

Just in case you didnā€™t know already, the Vanquisher set drop from the boss room chests of roguelike dungeons. Steps of Torment, Bastion of Chaos, Port Valbury, and Ancient Grove each drops one piece of the set (Chest~SoT, amulet~BoC, hat~PV, shoulder~AG).

The MI offhand drops from the boss in front of SoT skeleton key entrance (Zarthuzellan), while the MI belt I use drops from the first mini-boss in PV (Ordas). Mythical Mark of Divinity is from random drops, but you can buy a non-mythical blueprint from the vendor in AG, and that one has almost identical stats/proc as the mythical one except for +health so I think itā€™s perfectly fine to use. You can also farm a Kuba pants in AG if you want.

So you basically will farm roguelike dungeons until you get the gear you need.
From this post it seems that the chance of getting a Vanquisher gear per run is 5%. Mathematically speaking, the probability distribution of the number of runs needed to get one Vanquisher piece is a geometric distribution, so the average number of runs is 1/5% = 20 per piece and 20*4 = 80 for the whole set.

Note that the distribution is not symmetric, so the average number is not always a good indicator of RNG stuffs. But after 50 runs in one dungeon the probability you donā€™t get the corresponding piece is only 7.7%, so unless you are extremely unlucky you shouldnā€™t need more than 200 runs in total. And malawiglenn got his Vanquisher from SoT, BoC and PV in just 3 runs each, so if youā€™re lucky like him you can get the set in maybe 10~20ish runs.

I was on the unlucky side and used about 100 runs total to get the whole set (SoT 15ish, BoC 7, PV 70~80ish, AG 8). Letā€™s say you are more unlucky than me but still not extremely unlucky so you need 120 runs in total. With a beginner setup you should be able to do one run in 15 mins (starting from the town) without being too hasty = 4 runs/h, so thatā€™s 30h in total, which meets the condition for being practically farmable.

Actually I can kill most hero/mini-boss/nemesis monsters on the path and also do the ā€œdeath roomā€ of each dungeon and still finish in 15 mins with my aegis sentinel (grimtool). If you just want the Vanquisher item, you can simply ignore all mobs/heroes/mini-bosses/death rooms and finish one run in about 9 mins, then you do 120 runs in 18h. On average itā€™s 80 runs = 12h, so very practical in my standard. If youā€™re lucky enough and finish in 20 runs then itā€™s just 3h. I do recommend you at least kill Ordas for his MI belt though, I think itā€™s really good stuff.

>>> Choosing a build for farming Vanquisher set !! <<<

Will update this later, but basically you donā€™t want to farm the set (i.e. run roguelike dungeons) with a fire VM-centred build because IMO:
(1) without vanquisher set you simply canā€™t chain skating;
(2) Itā€™s very dangerous skating around in Gargabol 2nd phase due to all those fires and fissures. He also has very high fire resist (78%). (Fire resist of BoC boss is even higher)

So I personally recommend you do the farming with an acid aegis sentinel build, which should be both safer and do more DPS than a VM build when you donā€™t have Vanquisher yet.

The acid sentinel setup I used for Vanquisher farming:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNY45xlZ

malawiglenn has a collection of very nice beginner-friendly builds, my setup above is heavily inspired by his acid sentinel guide:
ā˜„ Collection of malawiglenn's Beginner Friendly builds
His build rely on only blue and easy-to-farm green gears, and you donā€™t even need the full Perdition set to start farming roguelike dungeons (I started with 4 pieces).

He also suggests the following fire sentinel:

But TBH I personally recommend just use an acid build in farming roguelike dungeons instead of fire, because two of four bosses are highly fire resistant.

Also see Neryā€™s post about beginner friendly acid sentinel:
[1.1.2.5] [caster] Beginner's/budget acid Sentinel
Itā€™s focused on Biting blades & DEE with easy-to-farm Dark Oneā€™s set, and I think it will also be very good for Vanquisher farming.

Some tips for farming

One tip on farming roguelike dungeons is to get 12/12 Tectonic Shift to reduce CDR of Vireā€™s Might no matter what build you are using (unless itā€™s not an oathkeeper), because travelling speed is the top stat you want in farming roguelike dungeons (unless you go super squishy and can get killed often - then you may want to get a mark of divinity or actually look at the screen while playing).

(Actually Gargabol in AG is pretty dangerous in his second phase, I died 3 times there due to his fissure attack, but I was super lucky to get that Vanquisher piece in the 5th successful run. I still donā€™t know how to deal with him consistently. In other roguelike dungeons I never died.)

Also if youā€™re farming PV and can oneshot those aether crystals then you can shoot at them while running and use Grim Internals to autoloot the crystals along the way, which at most increases 20~30s per run but gives you tons of crystals. Iā€™ve got 1k crystals and 30ish aether clusters in the first 50ish PV runs. (In later runs I got bored and completely ignored everything except for Van Aldritch trio)

For crafting skeleton keys youā€™ll need a lot of Blood of Chā€™thon. You can trade Ancient Hearts and Tainted Brain Matters for Blood of Chā€™thon 1:1 from the smith at Gates of Necropolis. I actually got half bankrupted and used up all of my Blood of Chā€™thon and Ancient Hearts, but I still had ~30 brains left for 30 more runs when I finished farming. And if you farm BoC a lot then you can actually get more Blood of Chā€™thon than you need for the keys. I just got unlucky (lucky?) for finishing BoC farming too early.

For components: youā€™ll need a lot of Ugdenblooms for those components (about 80~100ish IIRC). My advice is that you just finish the skater build with cheap components first, then farm Ugdenblooms using this route with your skater. I personally ignore the last three nodes in that route and finish farming at the shrine. You should be able to get all those Ugdenblooms in about 1~2h. (When I did it I also looked for living rings, wendigo spirits and Kuba pants, so not sure about the time for pure ugdenbloom farming.)

Putting up the gears

After finishing farming roguelike dungeons youā€™ll have the set, offhand, belt and medal. Youā€™ll also get some purples and a lot of blues (my purple gears increased from 1.5 to 5 stash pages when I got the whole set, and I also got a lot of blueprints). Then you just need to have a look at your collections and find out the best combination of gears for the remaining slots (weapon, rings, gloves, pants, boots, relic).

As you can see in the previous sections, even a setup full of blue gears and MI offhand with trash affixes can still do SR 75, if you putting up them correctly. So I highly recommend you have a look at all of your gears and try to put them together in Grimtool to see if you can make it decent in most aspects.

My personal standards on this build:

  • 3200+ OA when Ascension is up
  • 2700 DA
  • 2000 Armor
  • 12k HP
  • Elemental / Acid / Vitality / Aether / Chaos resistance overcapped by 30%
  • 30% Physical resistance
  • 23/16 Vireā€™s Might, 19/12 Volcanic Stride, 15/12 Tectonic Shift
  • 2200% Fire damage, 1900% Burn damage when Ascension is up

This is just a baseline, anything higher than this just makes it better. You can compare your own build with the G2 one for an easier reference.

Special note on secondary resistance (stun, freeze, entrapment, slow): these are actually super important in SR, try to get them as high as possible when Ascension is up (no need to overcap tho). Unless you know exactly what you are doing.

For the relic, if you really donā€™t have anything good, you can just use the Sacred Talisman from the Rhowan elder quest on Ultimate. Actually that relic is pretty good because it gives a lot of stats, 3% OA, and a 10s/35s +500% damage active buff which seems like a more manageable version of Iskandra. I just donā€™t want to use it because we already have too many buttons to smash.

Final Note

I actually think it is possible to make decent skater builds with any X+Oathkeeper combination as long as X has some good support to the damage VM can do (either converted or unconverted), so if youā€™re interested in skater builds but only have other class combination, donā€™t get discouraged and just try it out! The result may surprise you!

My todo list: Fire Sentinel (this post) > Acid Sentinel > Acid Dervish > Cold Dervish (thanks Nery for the idea) > Pierce Dervish > IT Warlord > Fire Paladin. All are Vanquisher-based skater builds :crazy_face:

Special thanks to:

  • x1x1x1x2 for his original skater build post and those fantastic videos.
  • my friend NOTorJB who helped me a lot in understanding the game mechanisms. He also has a Vanquisher Templar but uses a two-handed weapon and 22/12 Tectonic Shift instead of Zarthuzellan offhand and can still keep skating (though short-distance zigzagging seems not possible).
  • Degernase for those discussions on skater sentinel, I stole some ideas from his builds. Those discussions also encouraged me a lot to keep improving my build.
  • malawiglenn for his beginner friendly Perdition aegis sentinel build
  • sir spanksalot for his devotion and farming guides. The devotion guide is really informative and I learned a lot
  • Weyu for his Ugdenblooms farming route
  • Other folks that participate in the discussion in this thread
  • Crate for making such a lovely game.
  • Also thank you very much for reading.
5 Likes

Looks pretty solid for the first build designed on your own. Well done.

But gotta say I believe youā€™re wrong about it working for any OK + X combo. Vanquisher has a strong emphasis on burn damage, so you would want all burn sources you can get. By not going Templar youā€™re missing Callidorā€™s Tempest with Inferno, which is probably the strongest burn source in the game. While itā€™s possible to just focus on Vire like you did, Iā€™d still recommend Templar for that sort if a build.

Well, he already said thatā€™s itā€™s just because he doesnā€™t have templar and he already wants to play the build now :stuck_out_tongue:

@OP Nice one adapting vanquisher to sentinel. Some comments:

  1. I totally missed that weapon during testing. Someone pointed it out too in my thread and I think itā€™s better than warpfire. Probably the best non MI you can get.

  2. Itā€™s not realistic to get 22/12 Volcanic stride without gimping your build, imo. I think 19 is fine.

  3. Zipping at the back of an enemy to maximize damage is great, but in pursuit of cruci timers itā€™s not actually the best single target dps method. Moving the cursor from one place to another takes time that adds up and ultimately loses dps. At least thatā€™s what my personal tests say.

  4. You should drop DEE and bind meteor to CoF, still procs very well since CoF ticks per second per enemy, and having another non damaging skill loses dps.

  5. Phys res is the best affix for offhand on templar because it lacks phys res. In here you should have enough (tho more is always better) so thereā€™s room for just getting whatever the best damage on your offhand is. Btw, of scorching getsyou the most %fire/burn out of all the suffixes, tho thatā€™s less stats compared to the greens.

Ah, that explains why I still feel there is a large DPS gap between my sentinel and what I saw from x1x1x1x2ā€™s video. I have never played fire arcanist so didnā€™t realise CT can do serious burn damage. Thanks for telling me this!

There is a Mythical Volcanum blue medal that has +3 Volcanic Stride, so by changing Mark of Divinity to this I can get 22/12. Iā€™m still not sure if I really need that Mark of Divinity proc, if not then perhaps this medal will do the job I think.

Thanks for the explanation! Iā€™m completely noob to crucible so I believe you tell the truth. Iā€™ll add this to the post.

Ooooh, didnā€™t even realised that CoF can actually proc multiple times in one cast. This is exactly what I need, Iā€™ll definitely try this tomorrow. Thanks a lot!!!

I thought resists are something that is the more the better, so I was trying to get as much physical resist from gears as possible, especially because I feel the armor of this build is too low. But yeah maybe I just donā€™t need that much. Thanks!

Cinderscorn is very fun with MI shield Fleshwarped Defender, by sacrificing Vireā€™s Might cooldown you get a pure fire Judgement with pseudo-War Cry damage reduction.

Tried binding Meteor to CoF, found it very efficient in proccing just as x1x1x1x2 said. Itā€™s a huge improvement in QoL and also in safety. Updated the post accordingly.

Hmm, that might actually be a good idea if I can get 22/12 Tectonic Shift from other gears, which should still allow me to do mid-long range skating. Since burn seems to be the main source of DPS, by investing more in Judgement it might increase more DPS than reducing VM CDR. Will try this when I get the right gears. Thanks!

Looks nice, well done!

I will read this in more detail later.

I also liked your mathematical/statistics discussion

I do have an entire series on youtube devoted to ā€œdrop chanceā€, probability and confidence levels for ā€œat least one itemā€ (link to first series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtqJecx4Mx4&list=PLBTx32nCTZ2DLgBFBxg-mDFb_GNbo-jSl , link to second series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGANBOM4Wxo&list=PLBTx32nCTZ2DuoHusCQFcrEcplbJwT6zk )

For the particular case of Vanquisher set, you can use my ā€œHoly Grailā€ formula (using the Poisson approximation, 5% is small enough to motivate its usage)

P(at least one of each Vanquisher set item) = 100*(1-e^(-x1/20))(1-e^(-x2/20))(1-e^(-x3/20))*(1-e^(-x4/20)) %

where x1 is the amount of runs in SoT, x2 same but for BoC, and so on.
And e is of course Eulerā€™s number.
With that formula, one can insert the number of runs one has made and can thus get a feeling for how lucky/unlucky one has been :stuck_out_tongue:

As you qouted me, I was VERY lucky with the SoT, BoC and PV set pieces I just needed like a handful of runs for them but the AG item I did more than 50 runs for so ā€¦

Thanks! Just watched first two videos of the first series, like them very much. At first I didnā€™t get why you use Poisson distribution since you can compute the exact number from binomial, but then I watched the second video and realised that itā€™s far easier to compute those confidence level with Poisson than binomial.

I wish my maths teachers could teach me like that. My maths teacher taught us like ā€œthis is A, this is B, this is C, ā€¦ā€ but never talked about why we need A, B or C, so I never got why people like Poisson that much. I should really find some time to watch all of these videos. Nice work.

And itā€™s so fun you talk about probabilities while BGM is Kurast jungle, it feels like youā€™re teaching maths to those fetishes and flayers :smiley:

Thanks for not mentioning this in the original post, otherwise Iā€™ll probably never decide to farm this set lol

Seriously speaking, false hopes like ā€œhe got that in three runs so Iā€™ll probably also get it in the next three runsā€ is exactly what drives people like me to keep doing this kind of farming, so I probably shouldnā€™t mention any maths in the post :rolleyes:

Exactly, for most cases when it comes to item farming in ARPGs, the odds are so slim that one can use the Poisson distribution which have much nicer ā€œintuitiveā€ properties than the Geometric/Binomial distribution.

Feel free to use that formula in your first post. Some people will be lucky and say ā€œno this is easy to farm it took me 10 runsā€ whereas another person would say ā€œI have done 100 runs and I have not gotten a single oneā€. By showing the statistical distribution, this will help everybody to understand how ā€œeasyā€ something is to get. Like I have lost track on how many ā€œcomplaintsā€ and ā€œbug reportsā€ people have done on this forum about an item that ā€œdo not drop for meā€ even though they have only covered like 70% confidence level :stuck_out_tongue:

I should perhaps also add an explanation of what ā€œat least 1ā€ mean. It is a way to make sure that all players in your hypothetical ā€œuniverseā€ do the same amount of runs - even though in practice you might stop when you have actually drop the desired item. It is just a way to keep ā€œnumber of runsā€ constant and thus make the desired statistical interpretation possible.

Glad you liked it. As a math teacher and ARPG-fan/nerd I always found it wierd that most guides about ā€œgear farmingā€ never touches upon these fundamental concepts in probability. Most guides are just content with giving some ā€œaverageā€ number without telling/explaining what the statistical interpretation is.

I mean when I did that post you are referring to, I had no idea about the drop chances and I googled it without success - so I decided to ask around since I did not drop the AG item by that point hehe.

Okay so I tried SR 45~46 three times and faced a huge difficulty spike in SR 46 boss room like itā€™s an entirely different game. Iā€™m not sure if it is due to that tiny boss room or due to nemesis begin to appear in boss rooms.

In the first run there were Anasteria+Moosilauke, I died 5 times and then realised that I do not have any freeze resist except for Ascension. So I took out two random rings from my stash, put frozen heart into them and finally managed to pass that level.

In the second run I donā€™t remember who was there, died twice. Got 8 legendary gears + 2 blueprints from the chest room. :smiley:

In the third run I remember there were the Messenger, Kaisen, and two vengeance of Kymon guys. I managed to kill the Messenger and could reduce othersā€™ HP to 30~40% but eventually got killed by dot or Kaisanā€™s lightning. And sometimes I just got killed by that lightning from full health. Gave up after dying about 10 times.

Now I think I literally donā€™t understand this game :rolleyes: I thought my defence was fine, never expected that much sudden deaths.

Edit: Iā€™m going to reconsider my build and try to drop Phoenix and add Ghoul, because I start to feel that Phoenix is neither very reliable for survivability nor do significant damage. Mark of Divinity is god but not sufficient to keep me alive in this kind of fight due to 80s CD.

Thanks, Iā€™ll do some maths work later and add some probabilities to the post, since the main topic of this post is actually the ā€œpractically farmableā€ part.

Actually Iā€™m still a little bit confused - so you suggest using Poisson to approximate binomial, I get this part, but since in farming Vanquisher I stop doing it right after getting 1 drop, wouldnā€™t it be better to use some distribution to approximate geometric distribution rather than binomial? In other words, is it proper to fix the number of runs in this kind of discussion?

For a more general statistical measure that will take into account a large population of players, it makes more sense to use Binomial (or Poisson if the drop-chance is low).

So I would say its more of an ā€œa prioriā€ vs. ā€œa posterioriā€ analysis.

Letā€™s use P(success) = 0.1 = 10% chance here:

You have done your runs and you did find your item on run 15 letā€™s say. You can calculate the chance for that with geometric distribution and say ā€œok this had 0.9^14*0.1 = 2.3% chance to occurā€. This is an a posteriori analysis. But this do no help anyone else to figure out more about the underlying probability and expectations regarding this process. Like what is the fraction of players will get exactly one such item with 10% drop-chance in 15 runs? This question can be answered with the Binomial distribution (the answer is 34%).

So even though your actual process was quite rare (2.3%) more than one third of all players will one such item in 15 runs. This is an example of an a priori analysis.

But, we have missed something. In the usage of the binomial distribution, we only accounted for players that got exactly one item in 15 runs. Some will actually get 2 items, some will 3 items, and so forth. Thus, in order to accommodate for the possibility that some players will ā€œdrop outā€ and not do more runs, we need to calculate 100% - P(getting 0 items in 15 runs) to recover this. We thus need to calculate 1 - 0.9^15 = 79.4%

The conclusion is that 79.4% of all players will get at least one such item, in 15 runs or fewer. Quite a contrast to your own ā€œpersonalā€ probability 2.3% ā€¦

The geometric distribution have the drawback that it is hard to draw these general statistical interpretations from it. Sure one gets the average value from it, but what does average mean in this context?

I hope this cleared something. It is all about what question you would like to answer.

Ah I think I get the idea. So basically we are not interested in probability mass function but are interested in cumulative distribution. That 1 - 0.9^15 is also the CDF of geometric distribution with p=0.1 and k=15, so we are actually talking about the same distribution but just under different names and functions. That makes a lot of sense, thanks for clarification.

Exactly, you deserve a gold star for that one :wink:

Binomial is also more general in the sense that is not limited to success or fail on an trial by trial basis i.e. we can study things like ā€œProbability in getting at least 2 itemsā€ by calculating 1-P(0)-P(1) = 1- (1-p)^k - k*(1-p)^(k-1)*p and so on.

I love how this turned from a build post to a stat class lmao.

1 Like

Well, this forum actually has a personal math teacher since Malagwabiglagla joined us. :stuck_out_tongue:

Soon I will give you all homework to do lol

Class dismissed!

Jesus I only wish to understand something from that.People saying math is exact science never met me and my calculations:D

Okay so I stop trying to do no-death runs and managed to push to SR 60. It seems that whether I die or not in SR 46~59 is completely decided by what boss room map I roll. If I get Fleshwork room then itā€™ll mostly be 0 death. But if itā€™s Logā€™s tiny room then itā€™ll be 0~10 death depend on the boss combination.

I find Alex, Fabius, Reaper and Iron Maiden super easy since theyā€™ll just chase and get burned to death. On the other hand, Moos and Bennā€™jahr are very annoying due to their CC. Mad Queen runs on fire and procs shotguns like bullet hell, but itā€™s manageable as long as I keep distance. Still donā€™t know how to fight Kaisan, his shards cover half of the room and his lightning hurts.

In SR 60 the boss room becomes the FG town and suddenly the difficulty drops to normal, I can lure one-by-one and facetank them to death. It feels like SR 10. So I think my build is perfectly SR 60 viable if you ignore 46-59. :eek:

Edit: will update the build post tomorrow, just too tired right now. Man, SR is really hardā€¦

Actually science is mostly about approximation and tradeoffs. A famous statistician once said: All models are wrong, but some are useful. So if someone asks you 12345*54321=? and you answer ā€œvery bigā€, itā€™s still science.

Hi,

Thanks for writing this guide.

Can this VM sentinel farm its own vanquisher set if I level to 100 without it pre-farmed by another character? Is there a GT example link that can show it doing the 4 rogue dungeons? Iā€™m still farming for the vanquisher set on my other characters but Gargabol in AG is really tough, even while trying to avoid the fissures. Iā€™ve never finished AG before. Might leave AG for the last, but can this sentinel farm SoT, BoC and PV without the full vanquisher set?

Thanks!