Path Of Exile Best League Builds - Top 7 Best Starter Builds For Sentinel In POE

Many classes and Ascendancies make it difficult to tell which is better or worse in Path of Exile. What Are the best starter builds for the upcoming expansion sentinel in Path of Exile? Here we come up with a list of 7 excellent Path of Exile builds to start a league with. 

Path Of Exile Best League Builds - Top 7 Best Starter Builds For Sentinel In POE

These are builds that will not require you to get a ton of lucky drops or build up a bunch of Path of Exile currency to do a ton of trading to get good gear. Builds that will scale well with content get you easily through the campaign and well into the end game. But in the far end game, these builds will be superseded by the best builds. But you can use these builds to farm up all the gear and all the currency that you need to transition into these best builds.

1. The Seismic Trap Saboteur

This is a very popular build at the start of a new league. You start by picking the shadow core class which is a hybrid intelligence dexterity class that fights with claws and daggers. Then you move into the saboteur ascendancy class which specializes in laying traps and mines. This particular POE league starter build revolves around using a seismic trap as its main skill. This skill releases seismic waves to strike enemies in small bursts.

Pros and cons

This build is an incredible all-rounder, it performs at least decently in all scenarios. And is arguably the king of killing bosses with very little gear investment it's able to put out tons of damage. And it has a safe playstyle, you toss out your traps and then they just shoot out shock waves over a period of time while you're free to dodge around and avoid enemy mechanics. Trap playing playstyle is not for everyone, it's a little on the passive side rather than dealing damage directly you're laying down a trap and the trap is the one dealing the damage. But there's a reason that this build is so popular, however that popularity means that on the trading scene, a lot of POE items used in this build are in high demand at the start of a league. So prices tend to be high.

2. The Explosive Ballista Elementalist

Do you want to lay down ballista turrets that fire volleys of exploding arrows that set enemies on fire all while you're picking up loot? Then this is the build for you. You start with the witch class who's a pure intelligent spellcaster and then you take the ascendancy which turbocharges your elemental damage and basically makes everything you touch catch fire. Your main attack is an explosive arrow that launches an arrow that sticks to either an enemy or a wall and after a while explodes dealing damage in an area but you're not an archer. So you're not the one shooting the arrows, you are deploying ballista totems that will fire those arrows for you.

Pros and cons

This is another build with a safe relaxed playstyle with a little gear investment, this build can complete all the content in the game and you get great value with gear investment. You can really wrap up your damage at great price efficiency, you can even get tanky with the right gear. However, there are some easy mistakes you might fall into with this build.  

3. Skeleton Mages Necromancer

With this build, you'll start with the witch class again but then take the necromancer ascendancy which turns you into a master of the undead. Your main skill here will summon skeletons which initially summon skeletal warriors that will go up an attack in melee. However you will eventually be looking for a dead reckoning jewel, once you get this, those skeleton warriors will instead spawn as skeleton mages and skeleton mages just shred everything in your path. There are so many of them that they serve as a nice meat shield. Even if enemies get past your meatless shield and hit you, you'll be tanky enough to survive a hit.

Pros and cons

This build has a lot of armor a lot of blocks and a lot of life gain in order to recover after a hit. This build is another good all-rounder, you can take on bosses, you can farm end-game maps, it also works well on a low budget and scales really well with additional investment. Now this build does require a few items to really shine, there's that dead reckoning jewel that we mentioned, as well as the flesh crafter body armor. This basically heavily reduces enemy elemental resistance which allows your mages to hit significantly harder. The last necessary item you need is a cluster jewel with a blessed rebirth on it this gives your minions a bunch more life and makes it so that recently created minions cannot be damaged.  This really helps keep your mages alive.

4. Bane Occultist

This build is a comfortable all-rounder for people who enjoy seeing their enemy's life slowly melt away. You start off with a witch and then you take the occultist ascendancy which specializes in dealing chaos damage over time. With this build, you lay down a few different damages over time effects on enemies and then you just run around and dodge while your dots do their thing. Once they run out, you apply them again. You're using three-dot skills with this build, the first is bane which deals a huge amount of chaos damage over time. The second is a blight which deals chaos damage over time while also applying a crowd control debuff to enemies. And the third is essence drain which applies yet another dot while also healing you.

Pro and cons

This build deals great area of effect damage and so it's pretty good at clearing maps. Lots of people find the playstyle fun it's not too challenging, you apply your dots, and you move around which again lets you better focus on the boss mechanics and gives you time to react to them. This build can lack in single-target damage on higher tier maps, gearing becomes much more important at this phase and it can be quite expensive to get this built to deal enough damage in the end game.

5. Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder

If you're looking to later respect into a different build and you just want a really strong start this build starts with the agile ranger class. Then moves into the pathfinder ascendancy class whose focus is on flasks. This is a class with mechanics that revolve around the game's potion system. Instead of drinking your flasks you are transforming them into poison bombs and throwing them at enemies. The poisonous concoction skill is your main damage dealer, it has you throw an explosive bottle in an area that has a chance to poison enemies. If you have any charges of your life flasks left, it will consume charges of your life flasks to deal more damage. 

Then once you add the greater volley support gem to your build, you begin throwing out insane numbers of flasks at once, which gives you a huge power spike early on during your leveling process. Your projectiles are able to shotgun single targets. Meaning your flasks can overlap and hit a single target multiple times. Because the damage of poisonous concoction comes entirely from the skill gem and from your flasks, you don't need to rely on a good weapon to deal damage. This makes your leveling experience incredibly comfortable.

Pros and cons

Dealing great damage throughout the campaign, you're also really tanky since you're pretty much constantly benefiting from your flask effects since you're spamming them all the time as an attack. You also have high armor and high evasion. However, this builds damage does fall off significantly once you're into higher tier maps and end game bosses. Since you can't upgrade your weapon to increase your damage you can still power through thanks to how tanky you are. But fights take increasingly long.

6. Spectral Helix Champion

This build uses the spectral helix skill to make spectral copies of the weapon you are wielding and starts launching them and spinning them around to strike enemies. In the case of this specific build variant, we're actually using claws as weapons. We start by taking the dualist class which is a hybrid between strength and dexterity. It's great at both dealing with and avoiding damage. Then we take the champion ascendancy which has a great mixture of offense and defense and makes us build incredibly tanky thanks to the damage reduction granted by fortify.

Pros and cons

This build is consistently strong throughout the game and it has great single target embossing capabilities. It also has great life recovery through life gain on hit. But it's not the best at clearing maps or scaling into the end game. So you'll eventually want to respect into a lightning strike build. In order to really take your build to that next level. The other issue here with spectral helix is that because you are tossing out literal copies of your weapon, your weapon actually matters. Meaning as you're leveling up, you need to frequently upgrade your weapon and you need the knowledge of what to look for in a good weapon. In order to ensure your damage doesn't fall off as you are progressing through the game. The truth is not everyone enjoys the play style of shooting out spinning weapons.

7. Cold Dot Occultist

This is another damage over time build. But this time instead of chaos damage, it's cold damage. You're using the cold skills vortex and wintertide brand to deal cold damage. While you're moving you cast vortex which makes icy blasts explode around you. These leave behind icy vortices that deal damage over time and then you use brand recall to refresh and move your winter tide brands from enemy to enemy.

Pros and cons

It's a build that's easy to set up and easy to play and it has good survivability because you can move out of harm's way while you're still dealing damage. Since this is a spell-based build, it scales well as you level up with very little need for gear investment. Plus you have a ton of defensive layers to keep you alive. Armor, block, energy shield, plus crowd control through chill and freeze that said it's not a very fast playstyle. You're not going to be one-shotting enemies with huge upfront damage. This build needs to take its time to whittle down enemies.