Path of Exile 3.18 Sentinel is Rewarding but Annoying

as a more casual player, i must say that i really like that the sentinels are not that responsive, that means that it slows down the speedy top tear players a bit but is a great boost for the lower end.

I've been using stalker and pandemonium in Delve, there tends to be some nice pack density in there. Does mean you're killing everything along the path rather than rushing by and leaving them behind in the dark, if you just rush to the node without killing stuff you're not going to get the rewards of course.

Once you clear the node, all the rewards drop around you so easy to pick up, don't have to back track all over the place picking up loot. Then go to surface, pick next node from there so it generates new map, sentinels are refreshed, repeat until sulfite is empty. Allows you to rapid fire them off a bit quicker than you can with using them in maps. But I still use them in my maps too.

I've gotten a good number of recombinators this way with some 'more sentinel rewards' stalkers that I have.

A note, I do use RF, I can see where stalker would work better with it than with a range build that is obliterating packs off screen. Heck I still sometimes manage to shield charge into and kill half a pack before the stalker can tag them all as an RF. Just have to have to hold your attacks for a couple seconds so it can tag everything then go ham. Not really any different than when you'd be gathering up a huge pack to tag with the pandemonium sentinel.

it would be nice to automate them then u say it will cause a delay imagine u automate them and it procs and u get lags due to instantly procing many shaders in the game and u just die :') its just conflicting ( unless i misunderstood what u meant ) but i get your frustration.

I came up with my own strat because the rares were incredibly over tuned. I bred Apex sentinels to empower more targets. From there i allocated all rogue exile nodes on the atlas passive. Tormented rogue exiles explode for a literal full screen of loot per rogue exile. If you use this everyone, give me credit! lol.

test stalker + delve :P enjoy

I don’t like that the sentinels take 4 spaces of an already very limited inventory, specially when you have to accumulate them to craft good ones with two different new currencies, the main issue is POE inventory and looting system, not the sentinels as a mechanic

I pop my stalker at the start of the map and kite all the empowered mobs around the map until there's enough mobs to pop the pandemonium sentinel pop that and then deal with all 150+ empowered mobs at once. Easy to do with bane and profane bloom normally isn't any trouble at all they feel great and only takes me 30-45 seconds to kite and empower and blow it all up

Ur sentinel tree looks exactly the same as mine lol.

Personally, I don’t think it feels clunky at all. Currently playing as a gc miner and I’m also doing stalker right at start of map and then pandemonium at shrines or after opening strongboxes. Loving this league!

Playing CwC DD this League, pando does do a better job than stalker at giving more juicy fights. Didnt even try the apex since my build isnt "there" yet. I would love to you a sentinel crafting video and go more in depth with it. Love the idea of triggering the sentinels rather than activating them manualy since I often just forget about them...

I think it is better to choose your sentinel in consideration to both your build and playstyle.
I play Explosive Arrow, so my targets tend to live a bit longer, but i don't like to just stay idle and try to pack ennemies, so i just run through the maps placing ballistas while they die behind me. Which is why i chose to go the Stalker route, and not empowering normal monsters.
I run to the boss while empowering around 100 magic and rare ennemies, they die from my ballistas along the way, and i come back after to pick up the loot and kill those that survived my first wave.

As having to hit the extra button makes it feel just clunky enough it makes me wince a little, i tried for a bunch of maps actually trying to click on the icon which is sort of smoother but you miss some times given the chaotic nature of most juiced maps

Running a duo build with a friend. Im going full ham on Stalker, no normal mobs, only magic+, and my friend runs full Apex for those juicy semi-uber atziris and stuff. As long as you dont day to a stream of Abyss rares all buffed up with a 40+ empowerment stalker, it feels amazing. Speed is fine, since we are not a Zoomzoom build

I'm still kinda going through acts so my build is not super kitted out yet, so I have 0 problems with the sentinels. I decided to mostly focus on stalker sentinels, as that can net the most juiced up enemies, and then after I get enough power I might spec a bit into apex sentinel too. I'm playing a mine build which will never have good clear speed so I will never get any problems with sentinels being too slow, and also I'm already pianoing enough buttons as is, using sentinel once or twice a map won't affect me at all.

Im doing mostly Stalker with some Apex for regular mapping but I also have a minion build so bunching up a lot of mobs for pandemonium inst rly thesible and the killing range is close enough to empower most of the time with stalker

I dunno, I think the feeling mostly comes down to build and playstyle.

So far i've been running a Duo party to yellow tier, And we have nearly full uptime on stalkers with mods for high monstercount as we run to the other end of the map but with higher chance of rewards compared to a pandemonium. I still run pandemonium ofcourse but on specific contents like legion and breach. I lost count on the amount of times where the pandemonium didnt manage to chain fully however.

Yes! Any crafting help would be great. I didn't interact with Sentinal at all while leveling but now want to try

Playing RF and using stalker sentinels feels great. I am running eater influence and specced into the 'doesn't empower normal mobs' mod. I pop it at the start of the map shield charge my way to the boss, kill it and then go back and clear the rest. I've had a ton of raw chaos and a lot of expedition rerolls but no ex yet. Only been in maps for like half a day tho so it will come. Haven't tried recombining yet so I would love a vid on that.

Nice work on the video!

Felt the same way

I've started "maping" doing a lot of heist, and as heist with the archenemesis mods may be a bit rippy i didnt used the sentinels, but i took the branch that makes the ones you find to be at least magical and chance to be duplicated so i still get a bunch of them while heisting

The Red sentinel is by far the best one

I honestly hate this mechanic. I think it's easily one of the worst ones they've made. League Mechanic aside I'm loving everything else.

Just hit me that they're really pushing for slower play, but the gameplay is still so basic compared to Lost Ark. PoE's thing is zoom zoom and that feels amazing. PoE's thing is NOT 8 varied skills with poisitioning and skill management, which is what makes slower play feel worth the slowness

Playing RF, I found the pandemonium sentinels to be extremely hard to use. Any big pack of mobs is immediately dead, and with the delay of empowerment, it's almost impossible to do.
Activating a strongbox, running out of range, and then popping it seems to work somewhat, but I don't have the node that spawns mobs on deployment yet - I'm assuming they don't start out empowered and have to be empowered first?
What I'd really like is a node that makes pandemonium sentinels empower dead mobs and spawn them back in.

Similar to Kai, leveling Abso to go to Skelly mages for me. The red (Stalker) sentinel is great - I've got my board specced so it ignores normal mobs and provides rarer-tier loot, and have bred my sentinel for high duration and high # of enemies it can hit. As a result, I just get a constant stream of loot tiles during mapping, following behind my minion swarm picking up loot :)

I've been using the Apex to tag a few additional rares/uniques, but was planning to swap that to Pandemonium today in order to burst it, similar to the strat you're describing here.

I've been using stalker sentinel with no normal monsters empowered like a set and forget popping it at the first magic pack I found

Hmmmm, wonder if i should try to do Apex with maxed out rogue exiles, thats really the only thing I can think that I can think of other than maven that might be close to worth it.

I thought they were trash. Playing seismic trap so the starlker only empowered a few things. I realized you need to wait for the robot to do its thing, so now I feel stupid because the loot went from literally nothing to a mini loot explosion.

Crafty craft craft please

got a stalker sentinel with essence reward early in the campaign, and ive managed to combine and keep the effect so far and i have so many essences. I personally was excited for pandemonium sentinels and specced over to them in the tree but then specced off of it to go hard on stalker sentinels cause the pandemonium sentinels ive had seems like they barely empower that many enemies, vs my stalker sentinel that can usually completely empower most not abnormally large areas and gives hella essence drops.

I find the mechanic not really much rewarding at all. And its very annoying to play with, I just dont like it at all, I use them mostly to farm recombinators, becasue they sell so good in bulk, thats about it, but so far, no exalts or chaos dropping form them, or any good unqiues.

i play meele, sentinels are not really clunky and are totally fine to use and fun.

Definitely want a Sentinel crafting video!

I barely seeing more chaos drop. Hell, I'm stuggling with alcs to roll maps.

Pandemonium sentinel on a juiced breach or expedition is just a shower loot.
Really satisfying.

I like the mix of both stalker and pandemonium, my snowflake trickster rf allows me to utilize them both well i can trainrun alot of mobs for pandemonium, and i have low enough range for stalker to feel "okey"

I kill slower so was actually considering dropping the blue sentinel since it felt rippy and putting more into buffing the stalker.

Nice

Stalker legit just requires patience, a thing noone that plays poe understands. Its quite good.

hearing what you got to say about crafting them would be good.

Craft guide plz 😊

Among other things, I'm not killing magic or rare mobs before the sentinel can activate. That was a bit of a flex on your part. 😁

I have not found them particularly rewarding but I've only just got into mapping. It's also the least rewarding league so far in terms of unique drops, which could just be RNG, but it seems low.

Do you have a guide for this build?

Imagine having to get used to a new mechanic and wait a couple of seconds once per map... 🤣

Ok good take. News to me