Lightning Sentry Assassin Guide

Lightning Sentry* is the primary Damage Skill of this build. The Assassin lays down a Trap that shoots a piercing Lightning Bolt in the direction of its closest target, dealing Lightning Damage to every monster in its path. You can have a total of 5 Traps active at a time.

Death Sentry* complements the damage of Lightning Sentry by using Corpse Explosion. It causes nearby corpses to explode, dealing Fire and Physical Damage.

Fire Blast* deals Fire Damage in an area around the projectile when it lands. Use this to kill monsters Immune to Lightning and Physical Damage.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

Burst of Speed* provides a massive movement speed and Attack Speed buff. This increases your mobility and the rate you lay Traps.

Fade* provides you with a massive boost in Damage Reduction %, All Resistances, and Curse length reduction.

Mindblast* stuns enemies in a small square area around your cursor and has a % chance to convert enemies hit. Converted enemies fight alongside you for a short period of time.

Cloak of Shadows* can be a real lifesaver. For a period of time, the area around the Assassin becomes extremely dark and blinds enemies. This drastically decreases their aggro range and Defense.

Weapon Block* provides an alternative way to block attacks when dual-wielding Claws.

Shadow Master* randomly uses Skills (even those unallocated by your Character) from the Assassin's Skill Tree. Warning: The Shadow Master shares your limit of 5 active Traps and can replace your own traps with weaker ones.

Teleport* relocates you to any available space at your cursor, crossing over any gaps or walls. It can be used to travel long distances quickly and reposition during combat.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal, so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) Greater Talons and Greater Claws are the best bases due to their low requirements.
2) Weapon Block requires you to dual wield Claws.
3) Phase Blade is the fastest base you can build Crescent Moon in.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Holy Freeze

Use a Desert Mercenary with Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage. This Aura is also capable of breaking some Immunities.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• Buff yourself with Burst of Speed and run to the farming location of your choice. Keep it up at all times!
• If skilled, summon your Shadow Master. It acts as a meat shield and uses random Skills from the Assassin's Skill Tree. Alternatively, you can summon it as a decoy to get out of scary situations.

For High Density farming

• Cast up to 5 Lightning Sentrys stacked on top of each other, so they all attack in the same direction to focus damage. As soon as the first 1-2 enemies are dead, cast 1-2 Death Sentrys for their Corpse Explosion.
• If you are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemies, use Mindblast to Stun and potentially convert close up monsters to redirect aggro. Against ranged monsters, lead with Cloak of Shadows to blind enemies in range, reducing the amount of ranged attacks they use.

For Single Target farming

• To deal maximum damage, put 5 Lightning Sentrys on top of your target. Moving enemies have a higher chance to be hit when closer to your Traps.
• Use Fire Blast for additional damage after setting up your traps.

Note for Baal Waves

• Only cast 4 Lightning Sentrys on a side or behind the waves spawn location and 1 Death Sentry far enough away, so it doesn't use its Lightning Skill. This way the 4 Lightning Sentry can target down a monster from the waves and Death Sentry starts casting Corpse Explosion right away. This preserves all of its attacks for Corpse Explosion.

Immunities

• Before you have access to Infinity you rely on Lower Resist from Wand of Lower Resistance to break monsters Immune to Lightning.
• crack of the heavens sets the Resistances of Immune to Lightning monster to 95%. With Patch 2.6, -x% Enemy Lightning Resistance now applies to targets hit by your traps. Maximize this stat to deal as much damage as you can.
• You also have access to fire blast which deals Fire Damage. Use it to kill anything that isn't Immune to Fire as well.
• A reasonably equipped Mercenary and Death Sentry bring Physical Damage to the table, which can deal with anything Immune to both Fire and Lightning. This could take a few seconds, so consider whether it is worth to wait for the kill or to press on to the next enemies.

Late-Game

• Start runs by buffing yourself with Battle Command 2 times and afterward with Battle Orders from Call to Arms Flail.
• Switch to the Weapon Swap with the most +x to Skills for Burst of Speed and cast it.
• Position your Mercenary close to monsters you’re currently fighting to apply his Conviction Aura.
• [MIN-MAX Tech] - Immediately after you cast your Lightning Sentry Traps swap to Crescent Moon to reduce monster's Lightning Resistance and increase your Lightning Damage as much as possible. Stay on that swap until your traps killed everything around you or run out of hits (unlikely). Check the Damage Setup below for more details!

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate (FCR) speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 102% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

This build relies solely on Increased Attack Speed (IAS) from Burst of Speed for faster trap setting animations.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) increases survivability. Aim for at least the 48% FHR Breakpoint.

Faster Block Rate (FBR)

Faster Block Rate (FBR) increases survivability. Aim for at least the 32% FBR Breakpoint on Hardcore.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary concern is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point changes

• Put enough Stat Points into Dexterity to reach 75% Chance to Block.

Item changes

• Equip a Stormshield with an Eld Rune for maximum Chance to Block and Reduced Damage by x%.
• Hit +65% Faster Cast Rate with Magefist, Arachnid Mesh, a +20% Faster Cast Rare Circlet, and a +10% Faster Cast Rate Amulet.
• If no +6 to Lightning Sentry claws are available, use Heart of the Oak Flail instead to reach the Breakpoint at +102% Faster Cast Rate.
• 1 Ber Rune in your Helmet gets you to Reduced Damage by 50%.

• Lightning Sentry shoots beams of Lightning that act similar to the Skill Lightning of the Sorceress:
  • Monsters are pierced.
  • Travels in a straight line.
  • Every monster on the travel path takes Lightning Damage.
• Lightning Sentry shoots up to 10 times at a rate of 31 Frames per cast (Every 1.24 seconds) before they expire. This rate cannot be influenced.
• They only target monsters that are in the line of sight of the Assassin.
• Uses Attack Speed Breakpoints - Not Cast Rate!
• The Missile range (range of the Lightning beam) increases with each "slvl" (Soft Points, meaning every + Skill Point from gear or actual Skill Levels):
  • Formula (in Frames):
    8 + 2 * slvl
    Example: Skill Level is 22 (20 from maxing the Skill and +2 from gear)
    8 + 2 * 22 = 52
• The initial target must be within its Awareness Range of 16 2/3 yards.
• The Synergies only apply to the maximum Lightning Damage. This means the minimum damage always is 1.

Death Sentry is in the unique situation, in which in combines 2 Skills (Lightning Sentry and Corpse Explosion). Both Skill effects have certain conditions in which they occur and use up remaining shots from the maximum shot count. This means that a Death Sentry with a maximum of 7 Shots can use, for example, 5 x Lightning and 2x Corpse Explosion).

• Base amount of available shots is 5, which can be increased by putting Skill Points into Fire Blast. Every 3rd Skill Point, Death Sentry gain +1 shot to a maximum of 11 (with Fire Blast Base Skill Level 18).

The Lightning Sentry part will only be used, if there are no corpses in the sentries' awareness range (10 2/3 yards).

• The lightning beam behaves exactly as Lightning Sentry:
  • Monsters are pierced.
  • Travels in a straight line.
  • Every monster on the travel path takes Lightning Damage.
• Death Sentry shoots at a rate of 31 Frames per cast (Every 1.24 seconds) before they expire. This rate cannot be influenced.

The Corpse Explosion is used when there are corpses within its Awareness Range (10 2/3 yards) with the following mechanics:

• Death Sentry shoots at a rate of 31 Frames per cast (Every 1.24 seconds) before they expire. This rate cannot be influenced.
• The Corpse Explosion is weaker than its Necromancer counterpart, dealing only 40 - 80% of the monster's regular base Life.
• Damage does not increase with higher player count.
• Its damage is split into 50% Physical Damage and 50% Fire Damage.
• When the corpse's Monster Level > Character Level the damage is multiplied by Character Level / Monster Level.
• Within the Area of Effect, the damage is always afflicted. It cannot be blocked by any means.

• Cannot be active together with Fade
• If cast a second time, the second instance always overwrites the initial buff, even if it is a lower Skill Level at the second cast.
• The 3 variables (Duration, +% Walk/Run Speed and +xx% Increased Attack Speed) scale with the Skill Level (slvl).
• Duration = (12 * slvl) + 108
  Example slvl 10: Duration = (12 * 10) +108 = 228 seconds

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game tries to place you within a small radius around your cursor, even if it would be impeded normally.
• Teleport is not obstructed by walls or other impediments, but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions are teleported with you, Traps are not.
• Certain Minions in large quantities can become “stuck” in position after teleporting. Move away from that position to give them the chance to spread out.
• You can “extend” the visible screen by opening UI-windows like the Inventory or the Character screen. Continuously cast Teleport and drag your mouse to the edge of your screen.
• The Mana cost of Teleport decreases with additional Skill Levels down to 1 Mana per cast.
• You can use “ESC” to open the menu in single player to pause the game after a Teleport to determine if you are safe.