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

Yeah I’m a retard, spent whole of yesterday evening not noticing its high spirit requirement. I also forgot to add a golden affinity needed for phoenix (I experiment with devotions using the no requirement setting)

How does your Sentinel build currently look like? Because it seemed like you adjusted it a bit based on other posters advice.

I’ve been tinkering with my build(s) and have ended up with 3 different versions.
They all have rather… monstrous prefixes and affixes on the pants and off-hand but should be perfectly fine with worse versions.

I call my build ‘A Judgment of Fire and Vire™’

Build 1: Tanky devotion setup with 21/12 Volcanic and 18/12 Tectonic
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqlxRdV
This one looks like the strongest one to me, dropping 4 Tectonic only costs 0.1 second and 33% burn damage. Using Mark of Ulzuin to convert Judgment lets me use the much stronger Wyrmbone Gauntlets and the build has so much DA that skipping Earthshatter Treads isn’t a significant loss.

Build 2: Tanky devotion setup with 22/12 Volcanic and 22/12 Tectonic
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4Vx4QWrV
Compared to build 1 it has a rather significant loss of 140 OA (but gains 40 DA) and further loses 150 armor, 200% fire damage and 120% burn damage.

Build 3: Squishier devotion setup with 22/12 Volcanic and 22/12 Tectonic
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4NOk1A4N
The weakest one. Comparing it to build 2 it loses a whole 150 DA (but gains 20 OA) and further loses 500 armor and 24% reduced target’s damage. But gains 85% fire damage and 140% burn damage.
I thought Meteor Shower was an obvious choice for a fire build but doubting it now. This version can not support the item build used in Build 1 due to its already low DA.

I wanted to post all 3 versions even though I’m pretty sure Build 1 is the strongest just for the sake of documenting some of the changes and to rationalize my choices.

My current build: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23Jm6EN
Main changes: changed belt to get both stun and freeze resist, removed those proc-based devotions (harp, chariot, phoenix) and changed to something more stable (ghoul and solemn watcher). And also used Justice hands.

Actually the devotions now are almost identical to x1x1x1x2’s templar except for dropping some resist nodes to get elemental storm. I’m quite convinced that in SR this setup is better than procs in terms of survivability, but not using chariot resulted in some OA issue, so I dropped combustion band for more OA.

Your builds seem far tankier than mine, I feel they are almost completely different concept :smiley:

I have no idea how they will perform in SR because you went for Empyrion and those tankiness nodes while I mainly tried to get those pure damage procs. I’m actually not so sure about meteor, but I feel fissure really do serious damage. Empyrion looks good for survivability, but sadly it doesn’t have any burn damage.

So I guess your build will feel more like my skater warlord setup, very tough and can safely charge into pack of bosses, but kill stuffs waaaay slower :rolleyes: Which probably is not bad if you want to push to deeper shards. Also not dying in boss rooms actually reduces clear time, so it can still indirectly translate to DPS, which is good.

If you’re going to test them, I’m quite eager to know the results.

BTW if I were you I’ll just softcap Crushing Verdict and Presence of Virtue 12/12 and put those points into Clarity of Purpose. I really like CC resists :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: I actually think the third one is the strongest because if you can kill stuffs really quickly you just don’t need that much tankiness :smiley: 14k HP is already a great improvement in survivability compared to my builds. That resistance is problematic, but I think you can drop those Dreeg augments for resists and get pox+wasting to compensate.

I’m not entirely sure about your choice of skipping Crushing Verdict, DA shred is just so good especially if you feel like your OA is a bit low. Also the Seal of Annihilation having -OA makes Bloody Pox slightly less valuable (as it then technically boosts your -OA by 110). Bloody Pox is still good but consider -110 OA vs 230+ DA shred.

I will report back on my progress but sadly I didn’t have a Sentinel (nor Templar for that matter) ready so I’m in the process of lvling one. Luckily found a pair of Kubacabra’s Chausses in a character’s inventory that was recently looted before I even knew those were something I wanted. Mighty of Nature’s Bounty, 508 health, 5% physique, 42 OA, 11 health per/s, 12% health per/s and 29% elemental resistance. Could definitely be much worse!
Think I have most other things ready except for the caster OH.

Yeah it is good but I’m always a bit unsure of pumping a ton of points into things with somewhat poor uptime. Though with my 27% CDR it does go down to 18s CD.

You say Build 3 will kill stuff quicker, but will it even be in a significant way?
Build 1 has the following stat advantages: 127 OA, 101 DA, 650 Armor, 106% Fire Damage and 10(!) flat, 12% freeze res
Build 3 has the following stat advantages: 25% Burn Damage and 430 flat, 7% Crit Damage, 7% physical resistance, 18% slow res, 50% petrify res

After that it comes down to Light of Empyrion vs Meteor Shower, obviously the latter wins out on damage (I assume those numbers are per meteor?) but I find it hard to justify skipping all the advantages of build 1 for that alone. Also the 20% target’s damage reduction is huge for survivability.

As for resistances, yes was greedy as fuck but from what I understand you only really need to overcap aether, fire and lightning. I’m hoping that my resistance rolls on the gear is good enough to hit softcap (as GT shows average).
If I do have to sacrifice a Dreeg augment or two, Build 1 is in a much better position to give up on some.

And about Pox+wasting, I feel they’re a very large investment for a mediocre pay off. Amulet component already gives an okay -70 OA (although less reliably). If I were to reduce some skills it would probably be Judgement but even then I’d rather put them into Clarity of Purpose as you previously suggested.

EDIT: Also I feel as if you overlooked the most important aspect of my build, the name I came up with is 10/10.

No, -OA actually stacks just as -%RR does, so wasting is still doing -180 OA fine. However I do think Crushing Verdict is super good, I just can’t decide where to squeeze those points out. Maaaaaybe from Clarity of Purpose, but I just find myself too dependent to those additional CC resists…

I actually only engage bosses when Ascension is up, otherwise I just skate away and let dots do their work. Fighting only 1 boss is pretty safe with my build, but I really suck at luring just one and often end up fighting all of them altogether, in such cases no Ascension = death :rolleyes:

Your builds seem to have far better defences so maybe you won’t need Ascension that much. But I still recommend trying to have 80% stun/freeze resist with Ascension even if uptime is poor. Otherwise some dumb combinations like 2 Moos can easily freeze lock you to death.

I can be completely wrong but I think in SR your DPS is almost proportional to the number of burn sources you have. That’s because you just don’t have that much chances to face skating, and thus have very limited chance to apply direct fire damages.

With those mastery skills you have VM IT->Burn, VM item modifier, Volcanic Stride, Judgment IT->Burn and/or Heart of Wrath, that’s 5 main sources, so adding Meteor roughly increase your DPS by 20%. And by further adding Fissure it’s another 20%. Of course their base DPS are very different so it’s just a rough calculation, but I think it’s probably approximately correct to some degree :rolleyes:

The biggest problem with Empyrion IMO is that you need to get hit by melee, but unless you do a lot of face skating you just don’t have that much chances to proc it. If you can lure them one-by-one then it’s probably OK, but I find it very difficult in SR 46-59 with those Log rooms.

But, again, since your build seems tougher than mine you might be able to fight several bosses altogether. Man, this game is just too complicated it’s really difficult to predict anything without testing

You know my eyes are just too bad, I didn’t even notice Benn’s obsidian stuffs until fighting him again in super bright maps :smiley:

Nice name, I was going to name mine like Senquisher which is quite dumb I think

Oh yeah I knew that, it’s just not very common to interact with multiple deductive debuffs except RR shred so I must have just blocked that fact out of my head.
And CC res is somewhat tough for Sentinel, Templar has it much easier in that regard.

Yeah that’s fair, guess it’s something I need to get a feel for by playing the build and noticing its weak points. Will definitely keep an eye out for an insane green weapon like in 1x’s build to further increase uptime of it.

Yeah another issue of me not having played the build yet, didn’t really take into consideration that it becomes a rather burn heavy build with Vire and Judgment and of course multiple sources make quite the difference. But then again stacking one without the other (fire and burn) is quite hard so even if the 2 main skills deal burn damage it’s okay to use flat fire damage from some source.

I didn’t choose Empyrion primarily as a damage source, rather it’s a very strong defensive tool which just so happens to also benefit from fire damage. I don’t want to get hit but when I do take damage, reducing it by 20% is great. Its nodes are also very nice with DA, health, fire damage and resists and due to its affinity requirement it enables me to dip into beastly defensive devotions such as Obelisk of Menhir.

The build is still evolving and I’m at a point where some actual testing is required for me to make decisions on where to take it and what it lacks. Should probably have my Sentinel at 100 tomorrow.

No worries, just yearned for some recognition. Mine is also pretty dumb and basically just a reference but it sounds great. Not to mention that phonetically, the words fit the reference perfectly (well most of it) and also summarizes what the build does very nicely.

So obviously I’m in a crazy love with this Vanquisher set and just theorycrafted an Acid version of Vanquisher Sentinel, posted in another thread by adoomgod about Sentinel of the Three set. I guess I should also quote it here just for reference:

DA, HP and CC resist is a little bit low, but as I mentioned above we get three T3 devotions, with meteor fire damage 98% converted to acid. So as long as it doesn’t die too quickly during fight it should still be able to do some serious damage, despite using the vanquisher set. And I think Yugol proc actually works better for a skater build than a regular build, because it moves slowly and can easily fall behind if you play a regular build.

And we also have 98 -%RR, 28 flat RR and 12% RR for a damage type less resisted than fire, so I actually expect this acid skater can do more damage than my fire one.

Looks like it has potential but it also has a few downsides. Much lower crit damage because no Divine Mandate which is something DoT builds benefit from a lot.
Vire CD only gets down to 0.9-1.0 second which is a bit higher than to let you spam it.
I understand choosing AoM (easy acid conversion) but I feel like if you aim for a DoT build Judgment is much better as it has DA shred and a DoT component of its own. My experience with AoM is that you really need to focus your build around buffing it if you want decent damage.

You only have 50% global fire > acid conversion, I definitely don’t think Meteor Shower is worth getting, but the 10% crit damage and 5% OA are probably worth grabbing.

I think a retaliation build might have more synergy with an Acid Sentinel using AoM and Vire but I get wanting to use Vanquisher, which doesn’t really make it possible.

Nope, I have 98%, you forget the global conversion from Path of the Three :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree that crit is lame in this build, but I guess that’s the price for using Vanquisher in an acid build. Without DA you’ll die, without OA you can’t crit, HP is already not high, CC resists are not capped, and without +% acid/poison damage you have no damage… Really have no additional space to put crit into it, unfortunately.

But if it’s fun then I’ll be totally ok :smiley:

As for VM CD, since I find myself not doing short distance skating at all in SR 65-66 runs (for safety reasons), I think it would be OK. When I tested my skater Warlord it’s fine with 22/12 Tectonic Shift+Vanquisher+18% CDR, and this acid Sentinel has more CDR than that (28%).

Edit: and the best part of this build is that I already have all those gears so I can make it immediately if I have the time :smiley:

Edit2: Aegis vs Judgement: yeah Judgement has good DA shred (and also great AOE), but since we don’t have much crit and already have good OA, I think we probably don’t need it. Also you can actually get a good DA shred from FG mobility skill (e.g. Rune of Dark Progenitor gives 100 flat OA & DA shred), and there’s also Scorpion devotion which gives 150 flat DA shred, so there are many choices without investing in Judgement. Finally, it’s really difficult to get both +% acid damage and +Judgement (or more precisely +Heart of Wrath, because we can’t fully convert those physical damage of Judgement to acid) from gears, so I think Aegis is a far better choice in an acid Vanquisher Sentinel build.

Edit3: Idk why but I forgot to put one point in Resilience in that acid build

So I finally managed to borrow a better PC and record a gameplay video for this build :smiley: Hope this can make more people interested in skater builds. It’s really fun to play with.

You can see me play quite brainlessly in that video, sometimes completely forget casting Pox/CoF/Judgement, but it still performed okay I think. Sometimes I didn’t even charge into the right direction :rolleyes: Shouldn’t drink beer before recording.

I’m actually not sure why I almost got killed by Fabius at 6:43, did I charge into his shotgun or something? I was really lucky to have 216 HP left after that :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll probably update other sections this weekend, if the forum isn’t in maintenance that is.

Now this is a beginner guide! I really like the maths too (not sarcasm).

One thing I thought of that might be worth mentioning is that the Vanquisher set is transmutable. So if I farm say SoT for two drops I have a pretty good chance of cutting out PV or AG which are both tougher and longer for my toon.

Depending on the build of your farmer some dungeons are likely to be easier, and a couple of runs of each should tell you which ones.

Thanks! Unfortunately Vanquisher set is NOT transmutable, if you look up them in grimtools it says: “Cannot be transmuted into another item from this set”
https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11753

This also applies to other easy-to-farm sets like Krieg and Dark Ones.

What Udars said. You’ll also find that each piece of the Vanquisher set is specific to a particular dungeon. That GT link to the mantle clearly states it drops from the chest in the Heart of the Forest part of the Ancient Grove so it won’t drop in any of the other rogue-likes. Same for all the other pieces. To get the complete set you’re going to have to do all the rogues.

Thanks! Unfortunately Vanquisher set is NOT transmutable, if you look up them in grimtools it says: “Cannot be transmuted into another item from this set”
https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/11753
This also applies to other easy-to-farm sets like Krieg and Dark Ones.

Dang, my mistake. I did some basic googling, but I’ll check grimtools next time.

I started working on my own version again and I have all the gear except for Cinderscorn (currently using Alladra’s Spellblade instead). It’s a whole lot of fun to use and I’m also focusing a lot on Judgement, with Cinderscorn I should get it down to 2s CD.
But I’m having some DA/survivability issues.

This is my current more glass-cannony build I’m playtesting (but with different weapon and still farming some components):
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62a17a32

Another thing to consider is that I could hunt for some better rolls on the pants and off-hand, they’re decent but could be improved. Boots on the other hand are pretty amazing, doubt I’ll be able to craft anything better without going through a few hundred.

I’ve thought about more defensive devotions and Phoenix obviously comes to mind, Tortoise is another contender with all the CDR and I ended up with this:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrP4dL2

The problem is that the ‘defensive’ version actually doesn’t gain any DA and loses over 100 OA.
Upside is some ~180 armor and ~200 HP alongside the above mentioned defensive devotions. I’ve yet to try it because I’m still attempting to tweak the devotion setup but it’s a tough process and I would be appreciative of some input.

Here’s a video of me dicking around with it in the Tainted Grove, only have around 2700 DA on my ‘in-progress’ version so don’t think I can take it to anything dangerous until I at least finish up my components.

I see now why you don’t like to put points into Clarity of Purpose, you didn’t even use Ascension once in your AG video lol

As for the defence I’m also having much problem myself right now because I find it difficult to push to SR 70, just failed two attempts last weekend. With 2800ish DA and 12000 HP I often got killed in a blink of an eye. Farming 65-66 was okay though as long as there’s no Grava/Kaisan in FG town boss map.

One thing I can say with confidence is that it’s worthwhile to overcap chaos resist for this build. Yours is just too low. In SR you’ll have a difficult time fighting Grava and some other general Chthonian bosses because
(1) they tend to have very high fire resist (Grava 94%, Gabal 98%, etc)
(2) they have annoying skills like nullification, skill disruption (I personally find this very annoying, being unable to skate = instant death), fissure, huge DA debuff + OA buff aura etc.
(3) they run very fast and it seems impossible to completely avoid getting hit
You really don’t want to add (4) they do chaos damage and your resist is low.

I’m going to try to get more HP + leeching instead of DA. I feel that in SR you can’t really completely avoid getting critted by bosses due to mutators / buff / debuff stacking. In one run some days ago there were two bosses that can buff OA and I had about 20% chance to be critted by them :roll_eyes: So I think being able to tank one hit and immediately leeching back is maaaaybe better than stacking DA.

I’ll blame me not using Ascension on my unfamiliarity with the build and not having added it to muscle memory yet, though I do believe I tried to cast it but accidentally interrupted due to cast speed reduction modifier. I also completely forgot to use my movement augment (Blazing Ends seems really potent with this build).
Speaking of, is it cast speed that speeds up the starting animation of Vire’s Might?

The build also already gets 3400 OA with Ascension up despite just a casual point in Clarity of Purpose, don’t feel like needs more, especially considering my 263 DA shred from Crushing Verdict and another -70 from Annihilation component.

As for Chaos resistance you’re absolutely right. My plan is to farm more off-hands and pants hoping that it’ll fix some DA and resistance issues.
Is the OP GT up to date? If not I’d love to see your current version.

How do you feel about Harp? For me all energy issues were solved with an Arcane Spark and I’m not a big fan of ‘chance on getting hit’ DA. Instead I’m looking at Tortoise since the high CDR would make it quite reliable. Do you know if the CD starts resetting once the absorption shield is used up or when triggered? I’m assuming the former.

For leech my current build uses Ghoul and Seal of Blades which seems enough, the problem with leech is that Vire’s Might only steals life if you charge right at an enemy and Judgement doesn’t do it at all.

Hmmm, that’s a really good question, never tested myself. I guess that skill CD is a bigger factor here as long as you don’t have super crap cast speed.

No it’s not, I’m still tweaking it from time to time and I’m actually not sure when I can get a final version or something. What I can say is that the OP GT is sufficient to climb to SR 65 and farm SR 65-66 more or less consistently, though it’s quite painful to overcome those SR 45-59 tiny boss rooms.

I’ve already dropped Harp in my current setup due to the same reason you mentioned :rofl:
Not sure about Tortoise, never tried it.

Yeah this is the tricky part – in SR 70 the sustain provided by Blood of Dreeg + pots is not enough to keep alive against some bosses, so you’ll want to leech, but then you’ll receive more damage and thus you’ll want to leech even more, eventually making this build more like an autoattack build rather than a kiting one. And I think that’s where Templar becomes more flexible, because with mirror you can facetank even without good leeching. Still trying to figure out how to deal with this with Sentinel.

With 22/12 Tectonic Shift my CD is 0.6s and I often feel more limited by the casting animation than the CD itself as even with close range jumps it has reset by the time I arrive.

I realized that my build actually has 2 sources of weapon damage % from Light’s Oath and Wyrmbone Gauntlets, it may not be much but they proc very consistently with all the different burn sources going around.

For a short amount of time I tested a Templar version (just used GDstash) but didn’t like Callidor’s Tempest nearly as much as Judgment.

  1. It has a very small AoE and is less safe to use
  2. It splits enemies up rather than gathering them
    It surprised me how efficient the pull effect of judgement is combined with permanent Meteor Shower, Volcanic Stride all over the ground and other AoE item procs.

That’s not to say Templar doesn’t have its own advantages, just not as fun to play so I’d rather make Sentinel work.

Mind posting your current GT even if you’re in the process of changing stuff? I don’t care for an ‘ultimate, completely finished’ version as we both have somewhat different ideas on how to approach the build and mine will deviate from yours no matter what. But it’s very helpful to see what choices other people make, it can be easy to get stuck on a single track and completely ignore different solutions to the problem you’re facing.

I’ll post it when I get back home, currently I’m at my office and actually should start working rather than reading posts :crazy_face:

Edit: my current setup: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BzDWW2

Compared to OP GT the main differences are:
Gears: changed ring for more OA, changed gloves for Judgement conversion
Skills: points moved from Heart of Wrath into Judgement
Devotion: dropped Harp, Hawk, Phoenix for Solemn Watcher and Sailor’s Guide.

Not sure if this one is better than OP setup or not. I actually want to try something more different but due to completely lack of iron bits I can’t even afford respeccing my skill points / devotions lol. I created a new dervish toon last week, bought a lot of exp potions without looking at my iron bits and went bankrupt :roll_eyes: Now I need to pick up all yellow and green trashes and sell them for money.

Edit2: I probably should get Bat for survivability, don’t remember why I didn’t take it in these setups.

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Congrats on updating this build for the new forum format!

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