Shield Rush Build (like Flicker Strike in Path of Exile) - work in progress -

[th4m0s]

Hello,
while leveling a Sentinel to be a Void Knight using Erasing Strike, I used Shield Rush for leveling and found it to be an quite interesting mechanic. It feels a bit like using Flicker Strike in Path of Exile if you have played this: Moving quite randomly around the screen and doing damage.
How does it work?
To the left side of the tree there are three nodes: One sets you back to starting point when Shield Rush ends, One sets your mana to where you started and And One removes the cooldown at the cost of 15% health per use.
Then on the right side there is a node that repeats the last Strike (Explosion) so I only tap the Shield Rush key and two explosions go off after every tap.

Here is a little demo to see what I mean (made it to Wave 122 after this): https://youtu.be/zJnr1cZtwQk

As stated above, I startet this test as Void Knight, but then respecced my Lev59 Pala (he had all passives refunded at some patch). The video is of the Paladin at around 70 and with Undisputed unique axe as weapon. Still playing around a lot with skillpoints and passives.
At the moment I am using: Shield Rush, Holy Aura, Sigils of Hope, Lunge, Vengeance

As you can see in the video, Shield Rush is not always working as intened. It should give you the mana you had at the start, but instead sometimes you end up with full mana, although you hat way less (which is in fact a good bug) but often you also end up with next to no mana, even if you startet with full mana. That’s why I still have Vengeance to gain mana back with the “Time and Faith” node in Sentinel tree.

Has anyone experimented with the skill and come up with some ideas?

I find the health regen from Sigils of Hope helps you compensate the health cost of Shield Rush. Also as insta cast you can cast it right after using Shield Rush and when Shield Rush ends, you get all mana back. Activating Holy Aura works the same. Lunge is for movement and some Defensive and Offensive buffs (crit chance).

[DioDeUbi]

Wow, that looks interesting.

[Dethmonger]

This was my first real build, on what is still my highest level character. I opted for a crit based build with a polearm. The huge aoe and great damage make speedy clearing a breeze. I add lunge to actually move around, then spam shield rush. That’s really all you need, so it leaves a lot of other skill slots open. I’ve used ring of shields and the defense/movement nodes in devouring orb. I suppose you could even use it as a pretty decent ailment applicator too, given all the hits. It’s a great skill as as, but it hasn’t been touched in ages, so i’d guess it may see some attention before release for even more fun.

[sirmathew]

Nice and interesting, have not leveled my void knight for a while and was looking for an interesting and fun way to do it…
Will experiment with this

[AndrewTilley]

Looks cool and sounds like you’re in a pinball machine.

[sirmathew]

Yeah, that was my thought too, remembering these flipper machines that i played when i was young…