We’ve reached shard 40 in SR and we’ve completed Crucible with the extra spawn. We also defeated Lokarr.
Some of the items you listed are interesting and were among those we considered. An earlier version of the Sentinel had Nature’s Avenger (and he still uses the belt), and Targo was the most interesting alternative to Octavian. I don’t see much benefit in regard to skill bonuses, though. Several of the items don’t have any relevant skill bonuses, and the others have bonuses to Judgement or Presence of Virtue. Those are nice, but the addons (Crushing Verdict, Haven and Rebuke) are more important, and only Targo has a bonus to any of those.
We use pretty much all feasible items that have a bonus to righteous fervor. Stoneguard Ward is very nice, since it has a bonus to Retribution and a nice skill modifier for righteous fervor, but the Peerless Eye has +1 to all skills and an OA shred with 100% uptime. For Divine Mandate, there’s only a belt (would lose a +1 Mastery bonus) and an amulet with physical-to-fire conversion. For rebuke, there’s nothing viable at all.
Currently, I’m trying to figure out how to improve health regen for the Sentinel without compromising his other stats too much. Not much luck so far - the Octavian set clearly works better than Avenger, and with the Mythical Colossal Grasp I wouldn’t know how to compensate for the loss of attack speed and life steal. So far, the best solution seems to switch from the Stone Mason constellation to Tree of Life. I’m still reluctant to give up all the damage bonuses and the physical resistance and the nice skill, though.
We defeated Crate, Ravager and Callagadra. Ravager was the most difficult one.
I figured out a solution for the Sentinel’s health regen: we replaced Autumn Boar with Hammer, which freed up enough devotion points to add Tree of Life (except for one branch). In-game, with BoD and WoR, the Sentinel now has 26k health and 1000 health regen (the Tactician has 27k/1200). Unfortunately, he lost 4% phys. resist, so he’s down to 65%. Overall, though, I think his survivability increased.
Could you please share the up-to-date grimtools links?
I saw there was one a couple replies ago, but since then you posted a couple updates and being a newbie it’s hard to keep track of all the changes.
We’re still trying to further optimize the builds. Our current goal is to be able to beat Ravager consistently and with more ease, and to be able to push past shard 40 in Shattered Realm without losing the timer. Our last attempts haven’t been that successful, though.
Warborn Chestguard
For the Tactician, we tried replacing the Divinesteel Hauberk with the Warborn Chestguard, thus losing great group benefits (14% health, 5% physical resist and other resists), but gaining a significant damage bonus for the Tactician. Overall, however, this change proved to be detrimental to group performance, so we changed back to the Divinestell Hauberk.
Sentinel Shield
We tried some options for replacing the Sentinel’s shield: Octavius Bulwark (completes the set), Grey Knight, Siegebreaker and Markovian’s Bulwark. Our idea was to sacrifice the skill modifier to Blood of Dreeg and instead get a damage increase through a bonus to physical damage. However, it turned out that the bonuses from the new shields couldn’t compensate for the loss of the huge skill bonus from the Defender of the Three: DPS decreased for all four shields. In testing, Grey Knight and Siegebreaker worked fine (group performance didn’t noticeably improve, but didn’t decrease, either), while Markovian’s Bulwark and Octavius were obvious failures. We’ll do some more tests with Grey Knight and Defender of the Three.
Minor Changes
We started using Lifestealer Oil (we didn’t use any potions except health before). We moved the Sentinel’s skill points from Cunning to Physique to align his health with the Tactician’s. The Sentinel put one point each in Ascension and Clarity of Purpose. Those didn’t make a noticeable difference.
Ideas
We could try moving the Divinesteel Hauberk to the Sentinel - the bonus to Divine Mandate would be more valuable than the one to Fighting Spirit, since DM is overcapped, FS is not. However, the Sentinel currently gets nice set bonuses to physical resist, OA and physical damage from the Octavius set, and I’m not sure if I can find non-set items that are similarly effective.
Hey, thanks for posting updates, very interesting to follow!
On a side note, I see that Sentinel doesn’t have pierce res capped.
I assume it comes from some aura from a Tactician, but which exactly?
The Sentinel’s pierce res is from the auras on the components on weapons and shield - Seal of Blades and Seal of Might on the Tactician, two Seals of Might on himself (contrary to my expectations, multiple auras from the same type of component do stack).
Pierce is about capped, but not overcapped. Afaik, Fabius is the only enemy where pierce res is highly relevant, and Fabius is one of the easier nemesis bosses (for us, Grava Thul is probably the most dangerous).