In this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build Guide we’re going to be covering a build that focuses on leveling from 1-50 as a Melee character. As a Beginner Sentinel Build, it uses basic abilities only, and relies on absolutely zero Unique items. So it’s designed to work on a new account, Solo Self Found, or a first character upon launch. The Mastery of choice for leveling Sentinel is the Void Knight, to focus on buffing and dealing Melee Void damage.
Last Epochhas very deep customization options for passive trees, and Skill perks, that can be difficult to navigate. In this Build Guide I’ll explain how to get the most from this Build, which works great for a very quick start. So if you’ve been looking for a Sentinel build, with much less hassle, then this Guide is for you.
The Sentinel is a class that focuses on Defensive abilities and survivability, which make it more suitable for melee combat. We rely on the starter skills of the base Sentinel class, regardless of the sub-class we pick later. Most of these are Melee abilities, so we pick the easiest archetype and focus on it to level up. It’s ideal to spec into void damage, then pair it with Void Knight as our sub-class. The Warpath acts as the main damage skill of the Sentinel Leveling Build.
With this build, we can kill the mighty Lagon no problem, which is a very solid test for any build during a campaign. It also allows new players to go toe to toe with enemies, and learn most of their mechanics. That’s especially true with Warpath being a movement skill, so you keep dealing damage while moving away from enemy skills.
To compliment Warpath, we use Rive to regain mana, Rebuke to tank enemy nukes, and Void Cleave for closing the distance. For the last slot, we take a buffer skill such as Devouring Orb for Melee damage increase.
Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build Gameplay
The Sentinel Leveling Build has a straightforward playstyle, where you start by using Devouring Orb to buff. Then you Lunge if enemies are at a distance, then press and hold Warpath to clear everything else. Warpath allows you to move while dealing damage, so position yourself as the situation requires.
If enemies have a small health pool and will die quickly, keep moving forward. If the enemy is a boss that will tank a lot of hits, move in a circular path to keep hitting them while avoiding damage. In case enemies are ranged or scattered, move back and forth between them. When your mana drops, you can use Rive for a couple of seconds to regain all mana and continue.
Overall, Warpath is a flexible skill that will carry you from start to end, and is very easy to augment its damage. While channelling, you may interrupt your channel by using Devouring Orb again to renew buffs. The downtime is very negligible since it has 0.5-sec initial cooldown, which could be decreased further through stats.
Sentinel Beginner Build Active Skills
In this section, we’ll take a look at what Skills should be on your Skill bar to make this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build work. Not all five skills in this build are mandatory, and some can be replaced in some situations. But as a starter build, you have limited access to skills for the most part. That’s why we pick almost everything from the base Sentinel class and only complement it with Devouring Orb from the Void Knight sub-class.
Warpath
In Last Epoch it’s rare for classes to have a skill suited for all levels unlocked immediately upon starting. Sentinel, however, has Warpath ready from character level 2. Players can pick and specialize from the very beginning.
It starts as a Physical spell, so we aim to convert it into a Void spell as soon as possible. The conversion comes with a massive damage multiplier that increases hit damage per stack of Time Rot on the enemy. Time Rot is a void ailment that deals damage over time, and can be inflicted on enemies from many sources for a free damage boost.
In addition to that, we have easy access to added melee void damage to Warpath, which scales damage dramatically. We reduce the cost of channeling, get damage modifiers with two-handed weapons, and get life leech. We use the following tree to achieve these goals:
Warpath Skill Tree
As a leveling build up to level 50, we don’t get the full 20 points, but around 15-17 points instead. We also don’t get drops with +levels to Warpath so easily in this stage, so manage your expectations in terms of skill points available.
We start with 2/5 Void Spiral, 1/1 Echo Knight, and 1/1 Apocalypse Whirl. These give you access to the Void conversion, alongside some damage and a chance to echo your Warpath. The Echo chance in this part will increase by passive later when you allocate passive points in the Void Knight tree.
Next, you should add points to Unchained, you can settle for 2/5, 3/5, or 4/5, depending on how much mana you can sustain. I recommend putting minimal points here at the start, and rely on another skill such as Rive to regain mana. That way you have more points to allocate in potent damage nodes.
Get 1/3 Iron Reach for more area coverage, and 5/5 Whirl Steel for a massive damage multiplier. You can spec into Maw of the Deep when you get a source of Time Rot. Time Rot’s chance is converted from both Bleed and Ignite chances, plus 30% on Apocalypse Whirl node. The more stacks of it, the more hit damage multiplier Warpath has (From Maw of The Deep). It has a maximum of 12 stacks, so invest in a bleed or ignite chance only if you fall short of reaching 12 stacks on bosses.
For final nodes before hitting level 50, you may pick 5/5 Whirling Steel, and 1/5 Cyclone of War. For endgame later, you can complete 5/5 Whirling Steel, and 2/2 Battlemaster’s Blade.
Rive
In the Sentinel Leveling Build, we unlock Rive at the character level five, and we specialize it in the second slot. Rive is a simple three hits combo melee skill, with the third skill dealing a slightly bigger AOE. I recommend using Rive as a mana refund skill because the Sentinel class tree has a passive that grants mana per hit when using Rive. There’s also more nodes in Rive Skill tree itself that help regain mana rapidly.
Rive also has a very important node that instantly kills any enemy at 15% health or below. So against bosses, this is a straight up 15% clear speed, which is a huge bonus.
Rive Skill Tree
Start with 5/5 Flurry for a massive 40% attack speed, this makes regaining mana very rapid, and reduces downtime of Warpath. Then follow with 1/2 Rending 1/1 Cadence, and 3/3 Azure Crescendo. These nodes give armour shred, change the attack sequence into 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, and gains 15 mana on the third hit.
Now take 1/4 Iron Reach, and 1/1 Challenge to pull enemies on the second strike. Finally, 1/3 Brutality and 1/1 Coup De Grace for the instant kill at 15% Health. You may also take 1/1 Triple Threat for more damage and area on third hit, but that’s optional.
Rebuke
Rebuke is a channeled skill that increases defenses immensely and allows you to virtually tank any hit. It’s very useful if the Sentinel is caught within the boss’ AOE, and has no time to escape. It’s also nice against larger-than-usual enemy packs, which usually going through with Warpath alone is very dangerous. In these cases, all you have to do is use Rebuke and either kill the smaller enemies or survive the bigger hits from bosses.
In this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build, we spend points on the Rebuke damage side and survivability side. It unlocks early after spending five points in the Sentinel class tree.
Rebuke Skill Tree
For Damage, take 2/6 Retaliation, 3/3 Dark Thoughts, and 1/1 Voidfused Barrier. These give a damage multiplier, flat added damage, and give a chance to gain Void Essence. Void Essence is a void and melee damage buff that affects all other skills for a duration and can stack multiple times. Void Essence can also be consumed when your mana drops below zero to refund mana and continue channeling. But this extra perk comes later by the end of the campaign, when you reach the final passives in the Void Knight tree.
For Survivability, the left side of the tree is very helpful for our Sentinel leveling build. Not only does it give more bonuses during Rebuke duration, but with more investment, the buffs persist after you finish channeling. You even gain movement speed, cast speed, and attack speed.
So take 2/4 Regenerative Shell, and 3/5 Augmented Plating (Or 3/4 Brave the Elements). You can take both later, but for now move on to 1/1 Protective Legacy, 1/1 Burst of Speed, and 2/5 Solemn Vow. These grant the protective passives after you finish channeling for a duration equal to your channel time. This will then grant all action speed bonuses and extend the duration for these buffs further.
Devouring Orb
Devouring Orb is the only skill we take from the Void Knight tree. The reason being is that most Void Knight skills are spells, and scale with spell damage, not melee. Meanwhile, Devouring Orb can be customized as a buffing skill instead of a mere damage one. It unlocks after spending 15 points in the Void Knight class tree, so it suits specializing it for the 4th slot.
The buffs Devouring Orb provides are the following: global 10% void damage multiplier, 10% mana regeneration, 6% speed (Movement, Attack, and Cast speed), and up to 75% Void resistance. They’re very decent buffs for a one button press every 9 seconds.
Devouring Orb Skill Tree
5/5 Void Adept is where we start, with the damage buff right at the door. Then 1/1 Hollow Orb for increased duration. Now get 1/1 Dark Moon, and 1/1 Abyssal Rush for Devouring Orb to orbit you, and you get speed.
Now 1/1 Cosmic Impact and 5/5 Sightless Star is where we improve Devouring Orb cast speed, and reduce its mana cost. This smooths out casting while moving, and reduces the stress on your mana. Finally, you may put points in Abyssal Juggernaut for Void resistance.
Void Cleave
Before specialising in Void Cleave, I naturally used Lunge as a gap-closer skill. Lunge is a very limited movement skill you can only use when there are enemy targets. Void Cleave on the other hand can be used without a target, and makes mapping much smoother. However, you need to specialize in Void Cleave for it to be a proper traversal skill.
Void Cleave also doubles as a debuff skill applying up to 5 stacks of Void Resistance shred, and 3 stacks of Critical vulnerability. You may also apply Time Rot instantly, or Armour Shred. Overall, it’s a very good skill for a Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build.
Void Cleave Skill Tree
Start with 1/1 Into the Depth, Abyssal Walker, and 1/1 Gravity’s Edge. These five points are mandatory to make Void Cleave a traversal skill, with proper distance.
Now get the applicable debuffs, by going 1/3 Dark Pathway, and 5/5 Fraying Strike to shred enemy Void resistance. Go for 2/5 Into the Depth, 1/1 Precognition, and 3/3 Rift Maker. These inflict enemies with Critical vulnerability, for a nice damage increase on Warpath.
Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build Passive Skills
Figuring out how to spend your points in the passive tree is one of the most important parts of making a Build in the Last Epoch, and generally, it takes a respec or two before getting it just right. In this section, I want to show you how I’ve set this up for maximum performance from the get-go.
Note this is not the final tree for an endgame Void Knight build, with players having very limited access to items early on. This results in relying on passive nodes for everything, and even picking passives that could be respecced later for optimal damage output. But it’s a very good starting point overall, with the 66 points we get from leveling from 1-50.
Sentinel Base Tree
Sentinel is where you start by default and have to spend 20 points here to unlock specialization trees later. So put5/5 in Overwhelm for easy boost in damage early (you may respec later for 5/8 Juggernaut instead). Then get 5/5 Armour Clad, for early survivability, which is very important for a melee build that face-tanks everything.
5/5 Valiant Charge is another defensive boost that grants health and reduce movement skill cooldown. Then we conclude this tree by getting 5/5 Time and Faith for health and mana gain per hit. Rive hits very rapidly, so this is a nice sustain passive for all leveling process.
Void Knight Tree
Up to level 50, you have no other choice but to put points in Void Knight Tree. Even on full endgame versions of the build, most of your passives are allocated here.
Start with 5/6 Temporal Corruption for added flat Void damage, which adds to all skills, void-based or not. 5/6 World Eater is where you get life leech for Melee and Void damage, a very important stat to survive. Then get 8/8 Void Blades, and 1/1 Void Corruption for massive flat void damage added, and Crit strike Multiplier.
Get 6/8 Doom Knight, for generic Strength stat and Health. Skip the next column, to get straight into 5/12 Woe, which increases both damage and Armour after killing an enemy. Follow up with 4/4 Singular Purpose for the highest damage gain per point in the tree, and add 5/5 Echoing Strike, which is the start of a series of Echo nodes.
Echo is a property of the Sentinel and Void Knight class, that allows your skills to repeat on its own, dealing even greater damage. For Warpath, the Echo repeats in a stationary position, which could be very deadly for bosses who will get hit by both you and your Echo. If you manage to cast several echoes, the damage ramps up to a pretty insane amount. It also leeches health, you gain health on hit for double, triple and quadruple the amounts.
For more Echo chances, we start putting points in Time Legion, up to 10/10 eventually (needs a level higher than 50). Then finish with 1/1 Avatar of Regret. But don’t forget to put 1/5 into Essence of the End and 1/1 Void Well at some point. These give you an extra damage buff, but more importantly, enable you to refund mana easily.
Sentinel Leveling Build’s Weapon & Stats Progression
As a leveling build, it’s hard to precisely measure every single stat and compare them to each other. So producing a priority list is a bit tough. Especially with players relying on very random drops early on. There’s no proper way to farm equipment, and you shouldn’t waste a lot of time comparing items at this stage. If you know what you are doing, the whole leveling to 50 process might take roughly five to seven hours.
Prefixes
With that said, there’s a very simple rule of thumb for gearing this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build. For weapons, always use the two-handed weapon that has more base damage, flat damage added, and Crit stats. This might sound a bit weird, but any added damage is likely more impactful, even if it’s not a Void damage type. Crit chance stats are also very solid since Void Knight gets huge Crit Multiplier from its tree.
Axes also gain a lot of life leech from the Warpath tree, which is a great tool for survivability. Before level 47, I used a Glaive base Spear for the nice additional crit chance.
Suffixes
The single most important stat on weapon suffixes is “Health On Melee Hit”. It synergies with Warpath very well, which hits multiple times, multiple enemies, per second. So it’s an overpowered healing tool early on. The Health gain is instant and takes no time to fill your health bar.
Set up a special rule in your item filter to highlight any item with the Health On Melee Hit stat. Make sure to destroy them to get the Suffix shards, to apply them on your chosen item. You can also pick a good item base with “Health On Melee Hit“, then try to craft proper prefixes with chaos runes to make a solid weapon for all defensive and offensive purposes.
Weapon Bases
You may follow a natural progression in early levels, with higher-level Bases bringing more damage with them. You may also find a good weapon among all types of two-handed melee weapons, such as Axes, swords, spears, or maces. A very notable base is Ice Axe at level +47 which comes with Melee damage, added Melee Cold damage, and % increased Cold damage. So it’s almost self-sustained, and if you slap some good sub-stats on it, it will carry you through the Lagon boss encounter and beyond.
Armour & Accessories
We don’t have access to a unique, set, or Legendary items so easily at early game for this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build. So instead we will pick rare items, with a couple of useful stats, and naturally, we prioritize resistances. Each act of the campaign has enemies with certain damage types.
For example, Lagon and the whole temple as well as areas leading up to him are full of enemies with Cold and Lightning types. So a huge part of leveling quickly with success is raising Cold and Lightning Resistance. If you don’t die, you will not lose progress, so you have a smooth leveling experience, even if you kill enemies slowly.
Movement Speed is another impactful stat on leveling and your clear time in general. You will spend most of the time moving from point to point, especially if you achieve good clearing speed. You spend three seconds attacking, then move for the next ten seconds, so if you speed up the movement, the whole process goes much faster. So invest a lot into movement speed.
For easy damage scaling on this Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build, the most generic stat is Strength. Most of our skills have direct scaling with Strength, with each point in Strength translating into 4% damage increase. This damage increase is for all damage types, so it works well with any added damage on the weapon.
Resistance stats always come from Suffixes, or from several item bases. While movement speed is a prefix, and only appears on Boots or the one-ring base: Silver Ring. While Strength comes as a prefix on most item slots.
Idols
You barely get any idols so early on in the game, that’s why we don’t rely on them a whole lot. At the start you are restricted to Idols with two slots at first, then three slots. The third and fourth slots come much later on.
That means we can only use generic, none-class Idols up to a point, such as the Humble Idol and Stout Idol. On these Idols, pick resistances, Void damage, Vitality, or anything useful.
Later on, when you unlock Large Idols, get a “Chance to gain Inspiration on kill with Void Skill“. You may also get “Increased Melee Damage When a Skill Echoes” on Adorned Idol. Also “Increased Warpath Area” on Grand Idol.
Final Thoughts
This Last Epoch Sentinel Leveling Build is a suitable pick if you enjoy a melee class, and want to build a relatively tanky character. You can take many hits and still survive. So you end up spending less time dodging and dancing around. It’s a build with one key to hold down and forget, making it a perfect build for those who want a less complicated approach to gameplay.
This is not the fastest build to level, due to the nature of many defensive skills. However, things improve a lot especially after specializing in Void Cleave, which will have you jumping between packs of enemies faster. You have the advantage of dealing damage while moving and have the fun of playing the famous spin-to-win ARPG archetypes.
For more Last Epoch Builds be sure to check out nextLast Epoch Necromancer Build Guide: Flame WraithandLast Epoch Druid Build Guide: Physical Spriggan.
