Sentinel Controller: Powering the Sentinels

Sentinel Controller: Power up all three Sentinel Slots

Sentinel Challenge: Complete the Power up all three Sentinel Slots objectives on your Sentinel Controller.

The Sentinel Controller is like a runic circuit board that powers your Sentinels and allows you to customise their behaviour. It initially provides enough power to use one Sentinel per area but as you progress, it will gain enough power to support three.

You will place filaments on the Controller to dictate which runic nodes its power flows through. You can freely move filaments around at any time. As you gain more power, it will automatically flow to the next nodes you have connected. Use this Controller to establish specific behaviour for your Sentinel loadout that works well with your desired build.

List of Sentinels

There are three classes of Sentinels.

Name Description
Stalker Sentinel Stalker Sentinel Empowers a moderate number of enemies in sequence as you encounter them. They will follow you for around thirty seconds, empowering dozens of monsters before they dissipate.
Pandemonium Sentinel Pandemonium Sentinel Empower a wide swath of monsters at once in a quick burst. They are designed for mass area-of-effect, and typically only fire one shot. But this shot really counts, chaining between monsters to affect an entire screen full of foes at once. This class of Sentinel can be very dangerous because it empowers so many enemies at once.
Apex Sentinel Apex Sentinel Only empowers rare or unique enemies but have a very strong effect. They fire fewer shots but have a much larger impact on difficulty and reward.
Sentinel Controller PoE

Reach 30 Power Units Powering the Sentinels

Sentinel Challenge: Complete the Reach 30 Power Units objectives on your Sentinel Controller.

While the Sentinels you find will generally get better and better as you play through the league, you can also upgrade the behaviour and properties of Sentinels through your Sentinel Controller.

The Sentinel Controller is like a runic circuit board. It’s what powers your sentinels and allows you to customise them. There are specific nodes for each of the three types of Sentinel, so you can customise the properties and behaviour of all of them, or potentially focus on your favourite base types. You can also opt to not even power a particular Sentinel slot at all, freeing up more power for specialisation elsewhere.

As you play through the league and kill more and more enemies affected by your Sentinels, your controller will gain power. You start with four units, which is enough to power your first Sentinel Slot and the first Runic Node. By the end game, you are able to work up to 30 power units, which is enough for almost half of the controller to be powered at once.

So, how do you choose which runic nodes are powered? You do this by connecting them together with filaments. Power flows from the top of the circuit through the filaments until it is all in use by the nodes you have connected. You can set up filaments in advance and they’ll automatically be used as more power becomes available. Moving filaments around has no cost, it’s basically like a planning tool that gradually gets activated as you gain more power throughout the league. So you’re not locked in to a specific plan and can respec for free at any time.

Sentinel Controller Filaments

 Sentinel Controller PoE

Reconfigure Your Sentinels

Some powerful runic nodes require two filaments and hence allocate more of your power when activated. Additional sentinel slots, for other types like Pandemonium and Apex Sentinels, require three filaments and hence three power units. While it’s almost always best to have all three slots powered so that you can use three sentinels per area, there are niche strategies where you want to unpower specific sentinel slots in order to have more power for additional runic nodes, or so that you can fully specialise in just one or two sentinel types. Just to reiterate, you can change your allocation as much as you like, so feel free to experiment!

Upgrade Sentinel Controller

This powerful runic node allows Pandemonium Sentinels to be used an additional time each area. While this is basically pure upside, you should definitely plan around the fact that you’ll be running their charge down pretty quickly if you use this.

Upgrade Sentinel Controller

This runic node prevents your Stalker Sentinels from empowering normal-rarity enemies. While this seems very powerful at first, because you’ll just be empowering magic, rare or unique enemies that benefit greatly from the boost to item drops, you should be aware that unless you have a large source of special enemies, you’ll be fighting against the flight duration of your Sentinels and will probably want to build around increasing their duration.

While the Sentinel Controller lets you specialise how the different classes of Sentinels behave, it’s generally not necessary to have to modify it for each new Sentinel you equip. The runic nodes you have chosen represent your overall strategy for each class of Sentinel, and rarely need to be tweaked if you swap one Sentinel for another.

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Sentinel Controller Tree

# Description Points
1 sentinel drone 3 unlocked [1] 3
2 sentinel drone 1 unlocked [1] 3
3 sentinel drone 2 unlocked [1] 3
4 Apex Sentinels Sap Enemies for 5 Seconds with maximum effect on Empowering them 1
5 Apex Sentinels have 25% increased Duration 1
6 Sentinels have 15% increased Duration 1
7 Sentinels have 10% increased Duration 1
8 Sentinels have 15% increased Cast Speed 1
9 Pandemonium Sentinels have 25% increased Duration 1
10 Pandemonium Sentinels restore all of the Character's Flask Charges on Deployment
Pandemonium Sentinels grant maximum Vaal Souls to one of the Character's Vaal Skills on Deployment		 1
11 Apex Sentinels have 10% chance to not consume Charge on use 1
12 Apex Sentinels have 25% increased Cast Speed 1
13 Empowered Monsters grant 30% increased Sentinel Power 1
14 Stalker Sentinels have 25% increased Cast Speed 1
15 Stalker Sentinel Beams Chain an additional time 1
16 Sentinels have 15% chance to not consume Charge on use 1
17 Pandemonium Sentinels fire an additional Beam
Pandemonium Sentinel Beams Chain +2 times		 1
18 Apex Sentinels can be re-deployed after being dismissed 1
19 Apex Sentinels can Empower an additional Enemy 1
20 Stalker Sentinels have 10% chance to duplicate non-unique Enemies when they are Empowered 1
21 Stalker Sentinels fire an additional Beam 1
22 Pandemonium Sentinels have 25% increased Cast Speed 1
23 Pandemonium Sentinels have 20% increased Chaining range 1
24 Stalker Sentinels have 10% increased chance to add Rewards 1
25 Stalker Sentinels have 10% chance to not consume Charge on use 1
26 15% increased number of Enemies Empowered by Stalker Sentinels 1
27 10% increased number of Enemies Empowered by Pandemonium Sentinels 1
28 15% increased number of Enemies Empowered by Pandemonium Sentinels 1
29 Apex Sentinels do not Empower Rare rarity enemies
Apex Sentinels grant 30% increased Rewards		 2
30 Apex Sentinels have 10% increased Empowerment 1
31 Stalker Sentinels do not Empower Normal rarity enemies 2
32 10% chance for found Power Cores to be Duplicated 1
33 Found Normal-rarity Sentinels are upgraded to Magic rarity

3.18.0d: Updated the description of the Sentinel Runic Node that causes found Normal-rarity Sentinels to be upgraded to Magic rarity to clarify it applies to Sentinels found from Monsters you kill and Chests you open.

 1
34 8% chance for found Sentinels to be Duplicated 1
35 Pandemonium Sentinels have 10% chance to not consume Charge on use 1
36 Pandemonium Sentinels spawn packs of Monsters on Deployment 1
37 Sentinels have 10% increased Empowerment 1
38 20% chance for found Power Cores to be Duplicated 1
39 Pandemonium Sentinels can be Deployed an additional time each area 2
40 Enemies Empowered by Apex Sentinels have 20% chance for Rewards to be doubled
Enemies Empowered by Apex Sentinels have Onslaught		 1
41 Enemies Empowered by Apex Sentinels have 10% chance for Rewards to be doubled
Enemies Empowered by Apex Sentinels have +10% to all Resistances		 1
42 Sentinels have 20% increased Empowerment 1
43 Rewards are more likely to be less common types 2
44 Rewards are 15% more likely to be Sentinel Rewards 1
45 Rewards are 30% more likely to be Sentinel Rewards 1

Sentinel Controller Guide

3.18.0d Patch Notes

  • Character level no longer prevents you from using Sentinels in Act Areas.
  • Updated the description of the Sentinel Runic Node that causes found Normal-rarity Sentinels to be upgraded to Magic rarity to clarify it applies to Sentinels found from Monsters you kill and Chests you open.
  • Updated the Controller input mode keybind for equipping a Sentinel. Using this keybind when highlighting an equippable Sentinel will now also open the Sentinel Controller Panel.
  • Using the equip keybind in Controller input mode will now swap the Sentinel highlighted in your inventory with the relevant Sentinel in your Sentinel Controller Panel if you already have one equipped.
  • The charges on equipped Sentinels can now be viewed using the Right-stick button in Controller input mode.
  • The destructible pillars in the Polaric Hideout can no longer be moved by player skills.
  • The Invisible Buff Effect Microtransaction can now be applied to Withering Step, allowing you to hide its visual effects.

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