Best Sentinel leveling builds in Last Epoch

As you climb toward level 100 in Last Epoch, you’re probably wondering about the best build choices for leveling your Sentinel. Thankfully, when it comes to killing everyone and not dying, you can’t ask for a better class. So, let’s dive into the best leveling builds.

Best options for leveling your Sentinel in Last Epoch

As a melee-focused tank, leveling a Sentinel in Last Epoch gives you high area-of-effect damage, fantastic mobility, and good health recovery. Sentinels are normally fine in terms of durability, but can struggle to clear bosses or enemies without a focused build path.

Rushing and Riving—Sentinels’ early game

While you’re working toward your Mastery, you should take advantage of the two best parts of the base Sentinel’s toolkit.

• Skills: Rive, Shield Rush, Rebuke, Shield Bash, Warpath
• Critical Skill Specializations: Rive (Bound Weapon, Challenge)
• Recommended Skill Specializations: Shield Rush (Dark Rush)
• Important Passives: Juggernaut, Valiant Charge, Time and Faith

Sentinels get two excellent tools to do group up and damage enemies right off the bat. By far the most important one is Rive, a circular attack that generates Mana and deals massive damage on its third hit. Rive has two Specializations we care about—Challenge, which draws enemies in, and Bound Weapon, which can spawn Forged Weapon summons for you.

Shield Rush is the other big aspect of a Sentinel’s early game. Shield Rush makes you charge through any enemy, deals moderate damage, and boosts your move speed significantly while you travel in a straight line until you hit a wall. While you don’t need to specialize in it, Shield Rush has a lot of survivability and quality-of-life abilities in its tree—we recommend Dark Rush, a bonus that allows you to use a two-handed weapon or dual wield with the Gladiator passive and push your damage to the moon.

Your other abilities are more free-form and less important for the early-game. Run Rebuke to block important damage and give you a breather if things get hectic, Shield Bash for guaranteed stuns on boss attacks, and Warpath for area-of-effect damage. You can replace Warpath for similar abilities, like Void Cleave or Javelin, at your leisure.

Your passives should be focused on survivability this early on. Juggernaut is great for this, with a mixture of defense and aggression. Time and Faith is your health recovery ability, as well as granting you a lot more mana—up to 25 Health and 10 Mana whenever you use an ability that doesn’t cost Mana or Smite. We recommend going damage for your other Passives if you want to use a Shield, or grab some extra defense if you want to Two-Hand or Dual Wield.

But you won’t be without a Mastery for too long. Two of the three Masteries—Paladin and Void Knight—are great at clearing chapters. Forge Guards can absolutely clear content, but they’re slow and rely on Minion AI to kill enemies.

Holy Trail Paladin

Nothing like rolling out a red carpet all for yourself.

• Skills: Javelin, Vengeance, Shield Rush, Volatile Reversal, Holy Aura
• Critical Skill Specializations: Javelin (Holy Trail, Strategic Patience), Holy Aura (True Strike, Redemption), Healing Hands (Cleric’s Hammer)
• Recommended Skill Specializations: Volatile Reversal (Harbinger of Dust), Vengeance (Zealot’s Technique, Perfect Riposte)
• Important Passives: Time and Faith, Prayer, Sanctuary Guardian, Holy Icon, Heavenfire, Abyssal Endurance (Void Knight)

This Paladin build is almost entirely focused on the Holy Trail Javelin Specialization. The Skill unleashes a golden trail, burning enemies who step on it, as well as dealing moderate damage on impact. Your one-button clear method is to throw the Javelin, walk forward along the trail, and watch as your foes melt away behind you. This build doesn’t even need Rive—enemies walk into the AoE for you. Make sure you equip a powerful Spell Damage Scepter if you want to see your foes melt. And don’t throw away Healing Effectiveness, either—the Javelin’s Path of Judgement Specialization will make foes burn while you sit at full health. This ability alone makes clearing most dungeons a breeze.

The entire rest of the build is dedicated to dealing minor damage while fighting bosses and staying alive. Holy Aura is a great multiplayer ability, but still serves you quite well with its Healing Effectiveness buffs. Vengeance is yet another minor durability buff for you and your squad. You can consider taking the Volatile Reversal ability of the Void Knight, once you’ve invested a few points into its tree, for extra durability and extra damage for your Spear. It’s also a lifesaver if you forget to dodge a big hit—trust me, those extra two seconds can mean a lot of health.

Your passives have two jobs—buff your durability through Healing Effectiveness and Shield Efficiency, and buff your Spell Damage. Prayer, Holy Icon, and Sanctuary Guardian are big hitters in these categories.

Abyssal Echo Void Knight

For the opposite of the Paladin Build, consider the Void Knight and their Abyssal Echoes.

• Skills: Vengeance, Lunge, Abyssal Echoes, Volatile Reversal, Anomaly
• Critical Skill Specializations: Volatile Reversal (Time Rifts, Timelost Wisdom), Abyssal Echoes (Myopia, Shrieking Echoes, Abyssal Tendrils), Anomaly (Mark of Rot, Immediacy)
• Recommended Skill Specializations: Vengeance (Perfect Riposte), Healing Hands (Cleric’s Hammer)
• Critical Passives: World Eater, Void Bolts, Rot Grip, Echoing Strikes, Singular Purpose, Time Legion

The Abyssal Echo Void Knight is a lot more intense than the Paladin build, but rewards you with a ton of damage with massive areas of effect alongside absurd survivability. Abyssal Echoes is a huge damage-over-time ability that can clear chapters cleanly by itself. Then, you can use Anomaly to further drain Bosses and Elites’ health bars, and Vengeance to re-proc the full damage of the ability.

Sadly, this is one of the few Sentinel builds where we don’t want Shield Rush and instead take its worse brother—Lunge. Mobility is crucial, but we don’t have a shield, and investing in Dark Rush can be tricky if you want to stay alive. For that reason, we again Specialize in Cleric’s Hammer Healing Hands from the Paladin tree.

Alongside the lifesteal from World Eater, this Void Knight build is basically invulnerable to damage. As long as you keep on proccing Riposte using Vengeance on enemies, you will almost always be high on health and ready for disaster—even through rocky dungeons.