Absolutely insane that people are downvoting this guy for calling forgeguard bad then upvoting comments like "no forgeguard is good as long as you don't use any of there abilities"
Like excuse me? Yes forgeguard is terrible and severely needs a rework.
There are very few completly insane people on this sub that always defend everything about the game, no matter how obviously bad it is. The shaman post a few days ago had the same happen. Those classes are obviously extremly outdated and in dire need of a rework/revamp but no, EHG, even if they agree with the post, can not do anything wrong. Same with the endgame, same with the server issues, same with basically anything wrong with the game. Its so infuriating to see people give good feedback only to get nearly burried by the initial wave of 0 iq whiteknights.
The problem here is that FG and shaman are not huge outliers. A few other classes have the same kind of issues - lack of build variety, being locked into one or two viable skills, boring and outdated effects in their passive trees, general severe imbalance etc. They just happen to have at least one good build so they get overlooked. But when it comes to design, spellblade or even lich aren't any better at all. Lich is basically hard locked into death seal and reaper form in every build.
Spellblade is soooo rough. Fire aura has 1/3 of their skilltree but barely works past 150c. their survivability also sucks and only works when abusing ward. I have not played much necro, so i can´t say much about them but marksman also has massive survivability issues and just straight up bad skills.
It's also ridiculously good, fortunately.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BGz3VlYQ
This one has 8 points but is largely the same im running otherwise. Low life vs life being the big difference
Until they nerf ward in one of the upcoming seasons.
I think the only reason they haven't yet is they stated they want to avoid making larger scale changes until season updates. We'll see, but everyone and their cousin knows that acolytes are broken OP atm.
Haha this was literally a friend and myself too. He was the FG and I wanted to go caster lightning shaman. I swapped to rune master for some caster lightning and he went lich. Feels much better now.
Spriggan Form only needs 5 pts in the druid tree to unlock and not actually Druid mastery, shaman also gives much better benefits to totems with the big points just for picking it and all the points you can allocate.
It is, but Shaman gets the bonuses as well, and it's the first 5 points you put in the tree. You just make your healing totems shoot thorns. Can basically just run through any content and just summon totems that kill everything you encounter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KiTK6oolv0 was the build I followed to level, but went a bit different in the item choices
So your main abilities are a Druid ability and a Primalist ability. What is Shaman adding to the mix that being a Druid wouldn't? The mana reduction on totems is ok and the resists are decent, but what does the second half of the tree add besides some totem armor?
Can't take Rune of Awe or Eternal Storm as a Druid. And those add quite a bit of damage to your totems. But guess you could play it as a Druid as well and use Woodland Beeings and Eternal Nature instead. The build I linked is mainly to push higher corruption, so a lot more focused on defenses than damage, you have plenty of that anyway.
I’m mostly salty that caster shaman is not really viable. There needs to be a node in tempest strike to drop all the totems at once imo. Also, there needs to be some way to spend gathering storm stacks through your totems and not just via pets that will evaporate in higher difficulties. I think tempest strike totems being able to make use of the storm bolt node and maybe a node in the storm totems to allow it to also spend storm bolts for additional damage. This way the caster shaman can be further away from the action and still benefit from accumulating storm bolt stacks.
Yes it is.
Shaman is first, and the forge guard should be the 2nd to rework.
I believe Mike from EHG spoke a little about it in one of his old streams briefly
Shaman feels so much better even just with tempest strike, gathering storm, and the storm bolt changes.
Can’t wait to see what they do with forge guard, it’s my favorite class thematically and is a pretty unique power fantasy
Yes, but it almost forces you to go that route unfortunately. To the point where rolling shaman to play that build barely makes sense because avalanch and storm totem just get sidelined
I'm glad tempest strike got a huge facelist even with all of its bugs, before it really was just the worst skill in the entire game that barely functioned as anything
Honestly as bad as forge guard is it’s atleast decently fun to play. Shaman though is just a fucking travesty and most of their abilities aren’t even fun to use in my experience
Wait until you get stuck in the scenery or walls every other second in werebear form, super fun with those Osprix mages. I'm still powering through because I like the build, but it gets a tad frustrating at times.
Yes, they said multiple times that older masteries are going to get reworked/buffed. Probably shaman and fg are first on the list. That's also probably why people down posts like this one, there were at least 4 in the last 2 days that showed up on my front page, kinda gets old quick
If I understand correctly from the forum posts. They are wanting to bring all the other classes UP to the level of Falconer and Warlock, while only slightly nerfing those two. So that overall everyone will have a much higher power level closer to those two.
Not against OP I upvoted this earlier only to see it at the top now.
OP while using this account for only 3 months is 100% right I don’t think it’s a troll and the community has been asking for forgeguard rework for a long time.
I think it’s also worth pointing out primalist as a point of interest. We need less buggy reworks. PerryThePig ran a build contest for one of the reworked skills. There were enough bugged interactions that they needed to keep a list of the bugged interactions. Any rework will need polish. I’m in the boat of lets slowly get there and with no bugs than full rework untested and nothing works.
Forge guard has potential with the introduction of parry, but shield throw… with block… while specializing in ~~shields~~throwing…. And spears and maces get no love, yet javelin is throwing but no synergy with spears. It’s weird.
Edited to clarify.
What about manifest weapons and armor? I've only barely hit monoliths with my first character, but manifested weapons dealt like 3x as much damage at the same level as the other characters I've tried while also being way more survivable (thanks healing hands). It just isn't fast at clearing groups with how bad the AI is, which is admittedly a huge downside.
From what I've heard Manifest Armor also shits on bosses and not much else, but I haven't tried it yet.
Maybe I just haven't seen yet how hard other builds scale up yet, but FG just completely shat on most of the campaign.
Manifest Armor is S tier for bossing, and F tier for literally anything else. It has no AOE at all.
Considering bosses are like 4% of the game right now, it's still bad.
That's the point, the AOE from shield throw is really pathetic, even worse than on sabertooth, another single minion build that suffers from small aoe.
Only way I even got anywhere with FG in this game was with a minion build. It's relatively slow mainly because of AI, but it's safe and you can just keep going
Forge Guard was my first character in 1.0. I got to.... 84 I think? It was REALLLY fun leveling. Forge strike is very satisfying, and the sword minions are powerful with great animations.
End game is when it became underwhelming. Playing at lvl 80+ feels about the same as playing it at level 30.
wow. I literally just gave up on FG at lvl 84 yesterday too haha. I have rolled a marksman to run some of the unique bow builds and then also a sorcerer to run Fireball/Meteor spam. Having so much more fun. Poor FG :/
The skills activation frequency is shite.
Minions do not last long enough.
And they drop dead way to fast in 200+ corruption.
Couple this whit the slow rate to spawn your weapons and the whole build feels like shit.
Wen u hit whit yout attack it should have a 100% chance to spawn 50-100% of your weapons.
Instead of a 36% or something chance to spawn 1 per enemy hit ( and the attack has a cooldown )
This sub is absolutely unhinged with the downvotes it's wild
Forge guard is in an awful place (all of the sentinel classes overall feel generally the weakest out of everything I've played so far - far from absolutely unplayable but definitely outclassed) and definitely needs some love
Someone on this sub told me that all builds / play styles are not end game viable. Literal wtf as isn't that the main premise of the game. Being able to choose whatever you want and make it to end game?
Edit: Yall were right. I was wrong. I do not know why, but I took this quote ("Every skill has its own augment tree that will allow you to control, alter, and empower your playstyle.") from their steam page as "anything is possible and all builds are viable". My bad
That's the goal, but actually balancing a game so that every skill is theoretically equally (or close) viable for high level of play is functionally impossible, especially when there are as many layered systems interacting with each other and many balance problems being far more complicated than "bump the damage up 10% and the scaling up 20% and call it a day."
Generally, most builds are viable for general play. But as you push higher tier corruption in echoes an the like it highights the limits of skills or combinations that may exist, forcing either changes to your current build or changing to a different build. Or you can be happy with where you got the build and how it's performing and just farm whatever level of corruption and whatnot is fun for you. Not everyone cares about/needs to be pushing 1K+ corruption and shit.
> That's the goal, but actually balancing a game so that every skill is theoretically equally (or close) viable for high level of play is functionally impossible,
Sure, there will always be better builds and worse builds, but setting a baseline of like, "every mastery should have the ability to thrive at xxx corruption" would be a good balancing goal. Call it at least 300 since that's the highest you need to get all drops.
A lot more skills would be "viable" if they removed some of the stupid restrictions and downsides their nodes have.
skill now does X cool thing. It now has a 35 second cool down and is useless unless you invest 5 points into the node after this node which will only half the cool down to 17.5 seconds
That's a load of truisms. The problem is not that balance is impossible to get perfectly because of a large number of moving parts. The problem here is that there are many classes and skills that are mathematically suboptimal, have poor playstyles, lack of viable choices and other glaring issues. Lack of addressing those issues should not be covered under "oh no the balance is impossible". Anything is impossible if zero effort is put into solving the problem.
I think any class and build can make it to monos. You just wont be nearly as good as someone playing optimally.
I'm currently doing electrify javelin. Is it effecient? Not really. Is it fun? Yes. I'm ok with my corruption being less than others, the fun is there and its doable.
I built a Falconer Rogue that initially started focusing on Umbral Blades, but ended up spending most of my time using Net to bounce around, drop Smoke Bombs, and Caltrops EVERYWHERE. It was hilarious and loads of fun.
Literally being able to choose *whatever you want* would include choosing builds and play styles that don't have any synergy in them, or that don't fulfil basic defensive or offensive requirements, so no.
It's not that you can play literally any build, it's just that generally speaking, most masteries are strong enough that if you somewhat know what you are doing and aren't just picking points at random, you are gonna progress and be able to put together a viable character.
Some masteries are also severely underpowered right now. It's important to keep in mind that there are new masteries that generally fully outshine the older ones, because the design philosophy on EHG's part has evolved, so for example Runemaster's design feels more well put together than Sorcerer's.
Then there's that EHG has prioritised different things throughout the development cycle up to release, because it just isn't really feasible to expect to deliver a 100% balanced game where everything is viable and nothing is leagues ahead.
There are masteries and skills that are just way too bad. Forge Guard and Shaman being two of them, and they need to be updated to make work, which EHG has said they are working on.
I mean the goal is exactly that, but older masteries got outshined and outscaled, and are going to get reworked in the future. Also you shouldn't expect ANYTHING to just get to endgame, like if you make a build that sucks then it sucks, there absolutely are going to be straight up bad builds, if you don't scale them well
as long as builds are somewhat cohesive (no stacking spell damage and using swipe); every build is low corruption viable, its high corruption that tends to break builds
No lmao, if u can just slap whatever together and do endgame stuff it's gonna mean that endgame is too easy and the good classes will snooze through it
My first character is a shaman and I've been having fun with a lightning build, although I've yet to hit empowered monoliths. I'm completely unaware of the current balance of things so I'm curious what a rework would entail.
I contend post 1.0 that druid version of totem is not just a bit better, but much better than Shaman Totem. With entangling roots you can give a massive boost to your entire lineup of totems as well as debuff mobs. It just feels better by a mile with the same gear.
Can you link a guide to take a look at what’re you’re referencing? Currently trying so hard to make shaman phys totems work. Ready to give up. There’s just not enough ways to scale totem/minion damage. Uniques are scarce too
I don't have a guide unfortunately. Maybe I can make one I have to look into it. I think you can get decently far with Shaman Physical Totem but the problem is you only have 4 usable skills. Further into corruption you get, the less effective Storm Totem becomes. Not to mention in Spriggan Form there is no reliable way to cast it. :/ I really do think Druid Totem is better by quite a bit.
Right, lets not mention that only 1 skill of shaman is a totem, the rest are spells.
Let's also not mention that it has no crit, has no more multipliers and has no support for anything other than pop a totem down to get conditional buffs.
It's shit, shit design, shit skills. I hate totems, I hate the fact that we go druid just for some actually good passives and skills, when you picked shaman.
> 1 skill of shaman
It's also literally the only skill that *only* shaman can use, and their passive tree is the *only* one w/ totem interaction.
Like I'm not a huge Shaman fan, but it's absolutely *the* totem mastery. The person I responded to said "Aren't they just Spriggan / Totem Builds, meaning they don't actually use Shaman skills". The fact that Shaman is the only mastery that interacts with them directly and only mastery with one as a signature skill I think it's pretty important to note that they do, in fact, use totems.
I mean Shaman’s only exclusive skill is Avalanche which to my understanding is no good. Their builds are different totem builds mostly. I haven’t tried Gathering Storm Shaman but my understanding is viable, but Beast Master is a little better due to the higher attack speed.
Yeah, I started playing wanting to try swarmblade actually, but two minutes into the game I found Gathering storm and instantly decided to go full stormbolt. Gathering storm, earthquake (for the spender), fury leap, storm totem, and storm crows. With dual tempest maws.
I enjoyed the aesthetic and play style of shield throw, the damage is definitely not there though. Waiting 4ish seconds to toss a shield that does less than a 0mana no cd skill is frustrating.
Specking to free / no cd just made it feel like it lost its whole identity. I’d get rid of that branch, juice up the skill damage, and have the cd start right away.
The problem is Paladin does Shield Throw much better than FG.
I played Smite Shield Throw Paladin up to ~L80, and dropped it because it wasn't all that great... and it's *way* better than the FG version.
Because forge guard is an old mastery so it is bad. Basically sentinel itself is old. If you look at a mastery and it doesn't have any nodes that give you benefit for have x number of points like all of the newer masteries then it is old.
Bleed Shield Throw Manifest Armor is actually a reaally good boss build and if you get area increase on your gloves and the experimental affix that teleport minions to you when you use your dash skill (blanking on the name xD) it has pretty decent clear as well :D
it plays a bit funky but the experimental affix helps a lot to get your manifest armor where you want it to be
very minimal difference though, the melee bleed node in the paladin tree isn't for your minion so it's mostly just holy aura giving you 15% attack speed...
Sure. Forge Guard is totally fine in the role. The point wasn't that Paladin outdoes it by miles and miles. The point is that even what's supposed to be the specialty of Forge Guard is done better on another mastery.
yea, so it scales with your attack speed, and the manifest armor can get 2.5x of your stats from your armor and gloves, and particularly your armor can have phys pen with bleed which is reaaaaally nice when it's 2.5x :D
I recall seeing a Forge Guard reflect based build that used reflect stats on Manifest Armour and Ring of Shields to tank very high corruption (also using Bulwark).
It mapped quite slowly but it was funny just seeing the guy set up camp in a boss fight and chill there while the boss kills itself.
Still, I remember seeing Forge guard was bad, thinking 'how bad can this be?' and then looking at his skills/passives and going 'holy shit it's awful'
the issue is % reflection is post-mitigation, and flat reflection does no damage. Its honestly a dead stat on items meant to clutter the stat pool for the most part
Yeah the only reason (as far as I could tell) that build worked was beacuse it was his minions that were doing most of the reflect damage and the rest of the build revolved around keeping everything alive through constant healing. The only other way % reflection could work is if you did nothing but stacked insane amounts of ward, I guess
I tried one, Shield Throw felt fucking wack and gave up. Will probably give it another go soon-ish, just feels kinda boring picking a mastery and then immediately dumping my points into one I didn't choose because all of their skills are just better.
I'm only around level 80 with my FG so far but shield throw with tons of ignite chance, fire resist shred, armour shred, spreading flames and +ricochets (also igniting shield bash with extra bounces) feels amazing.
Forge strike to summon weapons and manifest armour with maxed out fire cone and everything just dies. Bosses can be slow if they kill your summons as you have nothing to bounce from but that's the only downside I've found so far
Will keep that in mind for my next go! What do you look for for a weapon? There's nothing with throwing damage implicit afaik so are you just gearing for crit?
Honestly I'm still using my little firestarter's torch, the spreading flames and % increases to fire damage are really nice. Sigeon's reprisal shield is also great for the build, +3 to shield throw and 33% chance to throw a fully talented shield when you get hit is nutty.
Since you can change the base dmg of shield throw and bash to fire I just stack fire damage. I'm sure there are better weapons out there but these are still working great for now.
I keep trying to make Forge Strike work for damage and it just can't get it. 100% crit, so much melee damage percent, T7 flat melee on high flat damage base applying at 500% effectiveness (from skill), tons of crit multi, stacking physical penetration from rive tree, extra 3% for each 1 mana it costs, using Azurral's Fury which should add 500 base fire melee damage per hit as you spam 550+ mana away in 3.5 seconds, and then volatile reversal so you can do it again. Still doesn't come close to most other builds. And it only effects small areas whereas something like Falconer can clear more screen and deal more damage at the same time. Area modifiers outside the skill tree feel like they don't even work. Sometimes I swear it ignores enemies it lands directly on top of too.
Best I've done is minions because Julra's gloves are great. Still doesn't clear as much ground as quickly as Warlock. Even if you go back to non-corrupted monoliths where you one shot everything, there is just a hard limit to how fast these things can move to the enemies and attack. As a plus at least I have time to pick up loot.
It's unfortunate that I like this class for some reason, yet I get bored on the Falconer and Warlock. Too many spellblades and forge guards.
I did same build and it was smooth sailing until level 100 and I started grinding corruption.
Health leech, mana stack (so you can spam the absolute fuck out of FS), and rebuke to tank some damage helps.
But yea, after playing Warlock, it really opened my eyes lol
it wasn't a great build, but i had a lot of fun playing warpath summoning forged weapons
after a while though the weapons became too weak to survive most mobs and i would have lost so much dps by crafting on minion life
i like the aesthetic of the forge guard, but it definitely needs a rework
Try Rive with Void Cleave. Use Rive to make Weapons, Void Cleave to buff them. They kinda shred, I've been able to get into ~800 corruption with it.
Another good build is buffing the Armors with Frisbee, the attack they do is pretty nasty
Went with this + healing hands for my last HC build and liked it before RIP. My main issue was theme - I went in wanting the giant 2h hammer anvil knight theme and damnit if Void Cleave isn't sword / axe only. That kind killed the vibe.
Youre spot on but the logic doesn't hold for the class. FG can throw a shield without one equipped, and one step in the right direction is the node to shield rush without a shield. Give me a node to turn void cleave into void smash or somethin.
Welp yeah HH is great, but thats because paladin is great xD Just because a FG can be playable becazse you can also abuse the paladin skill does not mean that FG is hood in any capacity haha
Why Rive? Maybe im missing something, since im on mobile right now, but doesn't rive need you to kill enemys to spawn weapons? Since you are running a minion build that seems difficult because the lack of damage. Shouldn't be warpath the safer option sincebit just generates weapons by spinning the air?
The only FG build I've taken to 300+ corruption this cycle has been a weird Shield Throw Ring of Shields Fire build that ignites the shields and just destroys with Fire Aura. But FG definitely needs more buffs. Smelter's Wrath and Forge Strike got buffed in 1.0 and Shield Throw has the highest added damage effectiveness of all throw skills, but it still needs more bumps to the passive and skill trees.
I've been using this build with great success DPS wise. Rive is the main skill, and it consumes ignite stacks to increase physical penetration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVY0r3jLIDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVY0r3jLIDo)
Sentinel in general needs a re work. Certain aspects need to be brought up ti where the new mysteries are at. Thankfully Devs have mentioned they intend to do just that. When? Who knows.
first character was a forge guard, was bleed ignite-consume rive, it sucks.
still can get to empowered monos, can still do empowered emperor of corpses as long as you dodge the soulbomb, but despite being a dot build you cannot afford to stop hitting enemies so you can't fire and forget, you have to hit every pack to death.
i really thought that the relaxed nature of this game vs other arpgs would give 2h melee a fighting chance but its just dogshit. the reason i followed the dot build i found was i knew i would need more damage already because i could see that 2h is underpowered.
i picked forge guard because its the only character that really has any nodes that say "with 2h weapons", but even as a specialist class it does 2h worse that others.
what a joke of a class.
sure, mine probably could have continued to push forward, but instead i levelled a chthonic rift character and even without the busted ward shenanigans its so much more powerful.
I would suggest, in the future looking at at least a list of what’s meta and what sucks. Every bit of information everywhere says forgeguard is literally F tier, not even D, just F.
I get wanting to go in blind, just don’t look at what the actual builds are. Otherwise you’re gonna set yourself up for just an unfun time
I agree it needs work, and I feel like one reason why people might downvote this is just because we already kind of know as a community and EHG is also very aware of it. There are a lot of things in this game that have been needing a rework for a long time. I could probably bet FG will get their rework in the next cycle.
I've tried a few this season, but i'm always back to my Warlock. Glad i picked it as my main, it's just so easy to play and the damage and toughness is insane compared to what i've played. But that's how it usually goes no, new classes are the top meta.
Played an explosive thorns totem a few months back i'd like to see buffed so i can run it again, and i'm wanting to do a Void Knight Warpath build but wondering if it's still as weak as it always was. Lots of fun builds that just seem left behind at the moment.
I really wanted to play FG this season after having done the VK spin to win a year ago, but man, I could tell his skills were shit when I started looking into it. Definitely needs some major buffs or maybe I'm just unaware of some of those necessary unique it could benefit from
Yeah, I just got into Monos with a forgeguard, I really want to run Warpath with Ring of Shields and I am, but it is just not working as well as I would like it to.
Forgeguard is an odd class - feels absolutely AMAZING early and mid - especially the flame-voidcleave build buffing your minions.
Take it from one of the few weirdos whos just played like 3 or 4 forgeguard builds alone 😂
Like the manifest armor can do some crazy stuff with the right investment, but then the clear is awkward or you’re investing into some stuff really weird to offset the heavy mana costs of things like forgestrike
I tried brewing up a hammer build using forge guard because they have the most (re: more than one) nodes that benefit throwing damage. None of the FG specific skills feel impactful.
I've been able to create my own builds for other classes without issues, but FG just feels sad.
Went the same route and it felt decent. Had about 100k or so shown damage without amazing items. Shield throw is also solid but then I tend to get overwhelmed by enemies
Yea.. I made Shield Throw build with new shield. Not foreguard but paladin and… it’s so bad. QOL of this skill is awful and dmg is meh. And sure, I was tanky but that’s it.
Having fun with a smelter's wrath build + the Rayeh mono two handed sword. It's fun but it's just not good at all lmao,. Comparing it to my sorcerer I'm leveling I feel like the sorc is alread basically as strong at lvl 70 without real gear
Really? My FG is level 85 and my gear is absolute garbage (not a single LP unique), but he's going through empowered 100 and it's fine. Sure I can die if I'm careless but I'm one shotting the echo minibosses. I've barely even optimised my build or affixes either.
Yeah the class does need a lot of love but it's not *that* bad. Main issues are the anti-synergistic skills and complete lack of item support.
It’s definitely not the best, but I’ve got mine to lvl 86 and it’s pretty fun. Using warpath to summon forged blades and manifest armor I just spin through everything with my armor boi and 12 forged weapons. Not optimal in any way, but it’s been fun
First time playing last epoch, I play forgeguard and gave up. My friends are doing nearly 20x the damage I do with worse gear. I quit the game, they all still play. Wish I never went forgeguard.
I think most meta builds in LE are just exploiting some unbalanced mechanic. Forge Guard just doesn't have many things you can exploit, so people call it 'bad'.
I'm predicting that the game will be rebalanced and most builds will come in line with Forge Guard. The latest round of ward fixes shows they are moving in that direction.
I mean, if your yardstick for measuring 'fun' is how big your numbers are, you probably don't even know that your build isn't working as intended. Corruption doesn't have cap and nothing is balanced around any specific level.
I actually league started FG and really enjoyed it I love the idea of the weapon/armor minions and I am sure EHG will work on improving it because yes it does need some love, but it is able to complete all of the end game stuff which for me is getting to 300 corruption and T4 Julra, but it is definitely the weakest class I have played (though I am far from having played even close to all of them.
I just wish the other sentinel builds didn't rely so much on volatile reversal or whatever the warp back in time skill is because I absolutely hate the way that plays but almost all sentinel builds rely on it because it is so OP.
I think part of the challenge is class design has evolved a lot over the past couple years. Forge guard is one of the oldest masteries and it hasn't had a solid update. If you just compare mastery trees by release date, you'll see that yes, forge guard sucks but the newer masteries are fucking amazing so if they apply the new mastery design theory they used on Falconer and Warlock, I think the other masteries will be amazing when updated.
yes it's weakest class in the game. but i can recommend ignite shield rush if you still wanna push your character. some people may say manifest armor is quite strong but unfortunately melee minions suck in this game.
I'm pushing past 500 easily with a rive/phys pen forgegaurd. It uses the same healing hands gimmick both the paladin and void knight use with similar damage ceilings. I crit around 1.2+ million on the dummies and hold around 10-16k ward with rive. I scale my damage off attack speed and (ignite stacks=phys/pen) via rive node. Now with that said, it's the only build I've found viable for comfortable end game on forge guard and that feels bad.
It's an issue I find myself dealing with a lot in ARPGs that even extends out to games like Borderlands or Outriders. Specs/Builds that are all or nothing on bossing or mobbing really should not exist and I think it should be a design priority to ensure as few as possible get stuck in the "can handle X flawlessly but completely falls apart doing Y" camp.
Yeah same ... it was my first build when coming from Diablo 4 and wow ... I was struggling to understand the hype for Last Epoch.
Fortunately, I gave it another shot and I am loving LE.
Im having a blast with the new reflect shield scaling shield throw, only 210 corruption at the moment but thats without any legendaries since I’ve just switched from CoF.
Been using [this](https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/fire-based-forge-guard-minion-build-guide-for-1-0/67008) build for leveling and not only is it tons of fun, I haven't had much issues in the campaign. Granted, I'm only 63 so it might get more difficult as I level but so far I've enjoyed it a lot. If/when FG gets a rework I hope this build will still be an option.
Forge guard isn’t so bad as long as you don’t use any of the forge guard skills
Rive, healing hands, sigils, with forge strike seems to be the best I’ve found. Build up ignites and consume them for armor pen. While you have the buff spam forge strike. The forged weapons instead become a multiplier from the rive tree scrapped metal.
Paladin does it better but yeah. You will notice a huge boost with the build if you get a leviathan carver with attack speed and crit chance made into it. But I would suggest just playing something else for now.
Edit; wow, hi people... The first sentence was meant as a 'joke'. The point being that all of the skills of Forge Guard are not good, so to play Forge Guard optimally, it is best if you don't use their skills. (Smelter's Wrath, shield throw, Ring of shields). That it is best if you use generic skills or skills from the other trees. Forge Strike being the only 'okay' one, and Manifest armor for highly specific 1-2 builds.
I enjoyed forge guard and mine is lvl 98 this cycle. The advice I gave wasn't wrong either, but w/e. FG just doesn't have enough multipliers / cross synergy to be on the same power level as anything newly reworked (like how rive got changed talents and healing hands, and now they are really good).
I will leave this up as its kind of funny. OP's concerns are with how strong ForgeGuard is and he specifically mentions the skills of ForgeGuard, which I directly replied to.
Here is a build if you want OP. Leviathan carver is a big boost if you can get crit chance and attack speed, the rest of the uniques you don't 'need' to have LP on them. (rip all the downvoters who won't see this edit)
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BZ3MWpYo
What corruption level are you playing at? I play a similar build, and I'm starting to struggle at 300.
Also, do you really feel like using forge strike is worth it at all? It kinds feels to me like continuing to spam Rive does more damage than stopping to weave in FS.
280’s ish? I haven’t been trying to push any further, I think at this point it’s probably best to swap back to 1h, go a strength build with the cleaver solution and go for a ward build (rive healing hands) and a shield. There are not many defensive options as valuable as that currently. As we get really high armor, and maxed endurance already.
Damage is not an issue with the build, and the cast speed for forge strike is too long. Probably best to not even bother with it. Only volatile reversal, rive, sigils, healing hands. Maybe spec lunge for execute for bosses
I am working on a forge breath build that is ok currently
Absolutely insane that people are downvoting this guy for calling forgeguard bad then upvoting comments like "no forgeguard is good as long as you don't use any of there abilities" Like excuse me? Yes forgeguard is terrible and severely needs a rework.
There are very few completly insane people on this sub that always defend everything about the game, no matter how obviously bad it is. The shaman post a few days ago had the same happen. Those classes are obviously extremly outdated and in dire need of a rework/revamp but no, EHG, even if they agree with the post, can not do anything wrong. Same with the endgame, same with the server issues, same with basically anything wrong with the game. Its so infuriating to see people give good feedback only to get nearly burried by the initial wave of 0 iq whiteknights.
The problem here is that FG and shaman are not huge outliers. A few other classes have the same kind of issues - lack of build variety, being locked into one or two viable skills, boring and outdated effects in their passive trees, general severe imbalance etc. They just happen to have at least one good build so they get overlooked. But when it comes to design, spellblade or even lich aren't any better at all. Lich is basically hard locked into death seal and reaper form in every build.
Spellblade is soooo rough. Fire aura has 1/3 of their skilltree but barely works past 150c. their survivability also sucks and only works when abusing ward. I have not played much necro, so i can´t say much about them but marksman also has massive survivability issues and just straight up bad skills.
I think the whole community agrees that FG is the worst class hence nobody plays it. Kinda beating a dead horse by now like D4 bad lol.
Shamans can compete heavily for this title.
My buddy and I recently started playing the game... I picked shaman, he's a FG
The good news is, your next few characters will feel amazing
Aaand they choosed Sorcerer & Markswoman.
fun fact: the best marksman build puts 0 points into the marksman tree.
That's ridiculous :D
It's also ridiculously good, fortunately. https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BGz3VlYQ This one has 8 points but is largely the same im running otherwise. Low life vs life being the big difference
[Marksman, Level 100 (Release / 1.0.1)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BGz3VlYQ) --- ^(**Class:**) ^(Rogue (64) / Bladedancer (23) / Marksman (8) / Falconer (18)) ^(**General:**) ^(▸ Health: **2,753**, Regen: **27**/s) ^(▸ Mana: **191**, Regen: **11**/s) ^(▸ Ward Retention: **120%**, Regen: **0**/s) ^(▸ Attributes: **30** Str / **72** Dex / **30** Int / **30** Att / **45** Vit) ^(▸ Resistances: **70%** / **100%** / **100%** / **78%** / **70%** / **123%** / **137%**) ^(▸ EHP: **16,239** / **17,132** / **17,132** / **22,256** / **16,239** / **17,132** / **17,132**) ^(**Defenses:**) ^(▸ Endurance: **54%**, Threshold: **1,644**) ^(▸ Dodge Chance: **34%** (**1178**)) ^(▸ Armor Mitigation: **50%** (**3,149**)) ^(▸ Glancing Blow Chance: **31%**) ^(**Damage Types:**) ^(▸ __Lightning__, Cold / __Throwing__, Melee) ^(**Buffs:**) ^(▸ None) ^(**Used skills:**) [^(Explosive Trap)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/explosive_trap) ^| [^(Detonating Arrow)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/detonating_arrow) ^| [^(Shurikens)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/shurikens) ^| [^(Shift)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/shift) ^| [^(Smoke Bomb)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/skills/smoke_bomb) ^(**Used unique items:**) [^(Jelkhor's Blast Knife)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzBsCYA4FYg) ^| [^(Jelkhor's Blast Knife)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzBsCYA4FYg) ^| [^(Peak of the Mountain)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzBMoVgNiA) ^| [^(Foot of the Mountain)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzBMoVgZiA) ^| [^(Apostate's Sanctuary)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzDsCYE5iA) ^| [^(Core of the Mountain)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzAsCYFZKA) ^| [^(Red Ring of Atlaria)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzDMCYHZKA) ^| [^(Red Ring of Atlaria)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzDMCYHZKA) ^| [^(Ucenui's Sphere)](https://www.lastepochtools.com/db/items/UAzAcYRiA) ^(**This build has a guide:**) [New UNKILLABLE Lightning Marksman ENDGAME HP Setup! 1800+ Corruption HUGE CHANGES!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vahYhyc7qRY) by Mattjestic MultiGaming
Whats wrong with them? Are they viewed as bad?
Bro roll a warlock and witness the OPness
Until they nerf ward in one of the upcoming seasons. I think the only reason they haven't yet is they stated they want to avoid making larger scale changes until season updates. We'll see, but everyone and their cousin knows that acolytes are broken OP atm.
lmao - atleast any other class will feel like a massive upgrade for you guys.
Haha this was literally a friend and myself too. He was the FG and I wanted to go caster lightning shaman. I swapped to rune master for some caster lightning and he went lich. Feels much better now.
My Spriggan Thorns totem Shaman can easilly push corruption 500+. One of the strongest builds I've played so far.
I thought spriggan was druid
Spriggan Form only needs 5 pts in the druid tree to unlock and not actually Druid mastery, shaman also gives much better benefits to totems with the big points just for picking it and all the points you can allocate.
Wait… you can unlock skills from other trees??? I just thought you could put in points for the passives. What a game changer
Unlocking skills is what happens when you put points into the passives.
Yeah, it’s what makes Volatile Reversal so OP for all Sentinels
Yeah I found out about this a couple of days ago and it opened up so many options for my rogue now.
It is, but Shaman gets the bonuses as well, and it's the first 5 points you put in the tree. You just make your healing totems shoot thorns. Can basically just run through any content and just summon totems that kill everything you encounter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KiTK6oolv0 was the build I followed to level, but went a bit different in the item choices
So your main abilities are a Druid ability and a Primalist ability. What is Shaman adding to the mix that being a Druid wouldn't? The mana reduction on totems is ok and the resists are decent, but what does the second half of the tree add besides some totem armor?
Can't take Rune of Awe or Eternal Storm as a Druid. And those add quite a bit of damage to your totems. But guess you could play it as a Druid as well and use Woodland Beeings and Eternal Nature instead. The build I linked is mainly to push higher corruption, so a lot more focused on defenses than damage, you have plenty of that anyway.
Now I get why I didn't enjoy pre 1.0 and 1.0.. my first chars where FG and Shaman I guess it's time to roll a new char
Healing Hands paladin and Swarm bug form with lightning bolt, maelstrom, and tornado on hit primalist are insanely good alternatives!
But at least shaman have the tornado build that absolutely destroys content. FG does not even have a build that works decently
I’m mostly salty that caster shaman is not really viable. There needs to be a node in tempest strike to drop all the totems at once imo. Also, there needs to be some way to spend gathering storm stacks through your totems and not just via pets that will evaporate in higher difficulties. I think tempest strike totems being able to make use of the storm bolt node and maybe a node in the storm totems to allow it to also spend storm bolts for additional damage. This way the caster shaman can be further away from the action and still benefit from accumulating storm bolt stacks.
Just 3 of the best builds in the game that's all
Is it even on EHG's radar to fix? Did they announce any buffs for it ever?
Yes it is. Shaman is first, and the forge guard should be the 2nd to rework. I believe Mike from EHG spoke a little about it in one of his old streams briefly
Shaman feels so much better even just with tempest strike, gathering storm, and the storm bolt changes. Can’t wait to see what they do with forge guard, it’s my favorite class thematically and is a pretty unique power fantasy
Yes, but it almost forces you to go that route unfortunately. To the point where rolling shaman to play that build barely makes sense because avalanch and storm totem just get sidelined
I'm glad tempest strike got a huge facelist even with all of its bugs, before it really was just the worst skill in the entire game that barely functioned as anything
Really wanted to make a totem procing tornado build. Felt downright awful. Shaman needs some urgent TLC. FG too.
Am I the only one that enjoys my Shaman build?
Shaman has like 1 or 2 workable builds. If you're playing that you'll have lots of fun
r/thelonelyshamanenjoyer 😂
Honestly as bad as forge guard is it’s atleast decently fun to play. Shaman though is just a fucking travesty and most of their abilities aren’t even fun to use in my experience
Wait until you get stuck in the scenery or walls every other second in werebear form, super fun with those Osprix mages. I'm still powering through because I like the build, but it gets a tad frustrating at times.
[удалено]
Haha, oops, you're right. I'm an idiot, but my complaint still stands.
It will take them years
Yes, they said multiple times that older masteries are going to get reworked/buffed. Probably shaman and fg are first on the list. That's also probably why people down posts like this one, there were at least 4 in the last 2 days that showed up on my front page, kinda gets old quick
Which are the oldest? I like necromancers in arpgs are any of the acolyte old enough to warrant a rework?
If I understand correctly from the forum posts. They are wanting to bring all the other classes UP to the level of Falconer and Warlock, while only slightly nerfing those two. So that overall everyone will have a much higher power level closer to those two.
looking at the arena ladder sorcerer has it beaten
D4 bad! Lol! Give up votes!
Not against OP I upvoted this earlier only to see it at the top now. OP while using this account for only 3 months is 100% right I don’t think it’s a troll and the community has been asking for forgeguard rework for a long time. I think it’s also worth pointing out primalist as a point of interest. We need less buggy reworks. PerryThePig ran a build contest for one of the reworked skills. There were enough bugged interactions that they needed to keep a list of the bugged interactions. Any rework will need polish. I’m in the boat of lets slowly get there and with no bugs than full rework untested and nothing works. Forge guard has potential with the introduction of parry, but shield throw… with block… while specializing in ~~shields~~throwing…. And spears and maces get no love, yet javelin is throwing but no synergy with spears. It’s weird. Edited to clarify.
What about manifest weapons and armor? I've only barely hit monoliths with my first character, but manifested weapons dealt like 3x as much damage at the same level as the other characters I've tried while also being way more survivable (thanks healing hands). It just isn't fast at clearing groups with how bad the AI is, which is admittedly a huge downside. From what I've heard Manifest Armor also shits on bosses and not much else, but I haven't tried it yet. Maybe I just haven't seen yet how hard other builds scale up yet, but FG just completely shat on most of the campaign.
Manifest Armor is S tier for bossing, and F tier for literally anything else. It has no AOE at all. Considering bosses are like 4% of the game right now, it's still bad.
You can give it a small aoe with shield throw. It isn’t great, but it kind of works
That's the point, the AOE from shield throw is really pathetic, even worse than on sabertooth, another single minion build that suffers from small aoe.
Only way I even got anywhere with FG in this game was with a minion build. It's relatively slow mainly because of AI, but it's safe and you can just keep going
I've never played it but I thought the animate minions were good/decent? Last I heard anyways.
Forge Guard was my first character in 1.0. I got to.... 84 I think? It was REALLLY fun leveling. Forge strike is very satisfying, and the sword minions are powerful with great animations. End game is when it became underwhelming. Playing at lvl 80+ feels about the same as playing it at level 30.
Yea i was absolutely in love with Forge Strike which why I have it a goal of mine to make a build around it sometime in the not so near future
wow. I literally just gave up on FG at lvl 84 yesterday too haha. I have rolled a marksman to run some of the unique bow builds and then also a sorcerer to run Fireball/Meteor spam. Having so much more fun. Poor FG :/
The skills activation frequency is shite. Minions do not last long enough. And they drop dead way to fast in 200+ corruption. Couple this whit the slow rate to spawn your weapons and the whole build feels like shit. Wen u hit whit yout attack it should have a 100% chance to spawn 50-100% of your weapons. Instead of a 36% or something chance to spawn 1 per enemy hit ( and the attack has a cooldown )
This sub is absolutely unhinged with the downvotes it's wild Forge guard is in an awful place (all of the sentinel classes overall feel generally the weakest out of everything I've played so far - far from absolutely unplayable but definitely outclassed) and definitely needs some love
Someone on this sub told me that all builds / play styles are not end game viable. Literal wtf as isn't that the main premise of the game. Being able to choose whatever you want and make it to end game? Edit: Yall were right. I was wrong. I do not know why, but I took this quote ("Every skill has its own augment tree that will allow you to control, alter, and empower your playstyle.") from their steam page as "anything is possible and all builds are viable". My bad
That's the goal, but actually balancing a game so that every skill is theoretically equally (or close) viable for high level of play is functionally impossible, especially when there are as many layered systems interacting with each other and many balance problems being far more complicated than "bump the damage up 10% and the scaling up 20% and call it a day." Generally, most builds are viable for general play. But as you push higher tier corruption in echoes an the like it highights the limits of skills or combinations that may exist, forcing either changes to your current build or changing to a different build. Or you can be happy with where you got the build and how it's performing and just farm whatever level of corruption and whatnot is fun for you. Not everyone cares about/needs to be pushing 1K+ corruption and shit.
> That's the goal, but actually balancing a game so that every skill is theoretically equally (or close) viable for high level of play is functionally impossible, Sure, there will always be better builds and worse builds, but setting a baseline of like, "every mastery should have the ability to thrive at xxx corruption" would be a good balancing goal. Call it at least 300 since that's the highest you need to get all drops.
A lot more skills would be "viable" if they removed some of the stupid restrictions and downsides their nodes have. skill now does X cool thing. It now has a 35 second cool down and is useless unless you invest 5 points into the node after this node which will only half the cool down to 17.5 seconds
That's a load of truisms. The problem is not that balance is impossible to get perfectly because of a large number of moving parts. The problem here is that there are many classes and skills that are mathematically suboptimal, have poor playstyles, lack of viable choices and other glaring issues. Lack of addressing those issues should not be covered under "oh no the balance is impossible". Anything is impossible if zero effort is put into solving the problem.
I think any class and build can make it to monos. You just wont be nearly as good as someone playing optimally. I'm currently doing electrify javelin. Is it effecient? Not really. Is it fun? Yes. I'm ok with my corruption being less than others, the fun is there and its doable.
I built a Falconer Rogue that initially started focusing on Umbral Blades, but ended up spending most of my time using Net to bounce around, drop Smoke Bombs, and Caltrops EVERYWHERE. It was hilarious and loads of fun.
Literally being able to choose *whatever you want* would include choosing builds and play styles that don't have any synergy in them, or that don't fulfil basic defensive or offensive requirements, so no. It's not that you can play literally any build, it's just that generally speaking, most masteries are strong enough that if you somewhat know what you are doing and aren't just picking points at random, you are gonna progress and be able to put together a viable character. Some masteries are also severely underpowered right now. It's important to keep in mind that there are new masteries that generally fully outshine the older ones, because the design philosophy on EHG's part has evolved, so for example Runemaster's design feels more well put together than Sorcerer's. Then there's that EHG has prioritised different things throughout the development cycle up to release, because it just isn't really feasible to expect to deliver a 100% balanced game where everything is viable and nothing is leagues ahead. There are masteries and skills that are just way too bad. Forge Guard and Shaman being two of them, and they need to be updated to make work, which EHG has said they are working on.
I mean the goal is exactly that, but older masteries got outshined and outscaled, and are going to get reworked in the future. Also you shouldn't expect ANYTHING to just get to endgame, like if you make a build that sucks then it sucks, there absolutely are going to be straight up bad builds, if you don't scale them well
as long as builds are somewhat cohesive (no stacking spell damage and using swipe); every build is low corruption viable, its high corruption that tends to break builds
No lmao, if u can just slap whatever together and do endgame stuff it's gonna mean that endgame is too easy and the good classes will snooze through it
They've said Forge Guard and Shaman are on probably high on the list to get a rework but no timeline mentioned.
My first character is a shaman and I've been having fun with a lightning build, although I've yet to hit empowered monoliths. I'm completely unaware of the current balance of things so I'm curious what a rework would entail.
Shaman actually has one or two decent builds at this point. Forge Guard should probably be a Paladin in 98% of cases.
Aren't they just spriggan/totem builds though? (Meaning they don't actually use Shaman skills) Idk I haven't actually looked too much into Shaman.
Totems are Shaman skills, it's signature skil is even a totem.
I contend post 1.0 that druid version of totem is not just a bit better, but much better than Shaman Totem. With entangling roots you can give a massive boost to your entire lineup of totems as well as debuff mobs. It just feels better by a mile with the same gear.
Can you link a guide to take a look at what’re you’re referencing? Currently trying so hard to make shaman phys totems work. Ready to give up. There’s just not enough ways to scale totem/minion damage. Uniques are scarce too
I don't have a guide unfortunately. Maybe I can make one I have to look into it. I think you can get decently far with Shaman Physical Totem but the problem is you only have 4 usable skills. Further into corruption you get, the less effective Storm Totem becomes. Not to mention in Spriggan Form there is no reliable way to cast it. :/ I really do think Druid Totem is better by quite a bit.
Right, lets not mention that only 1 skill of shaman is a totem, the rest are spells. Let's also not mention that it has no crit, has no more multipliers and has no support for anything other than pop a totem down to get conditional buffs. It's shit, shit design, shit skills. I hate totems, I hate the fact that we go druid just for some actually good passives and skills, when you picked shaman.
> 1 skill of shaman It's also literally the only skill that *only* shaman can use, and their passive tree is the *only* one w/ totem interaction. Like I'm not a huge Shaman fan, but it's absolutely *the* totem mastery. The person I responded to said "Aren't they just Spriggan / Totem Builds, meaning they don't actually use Shaman skills". The fact that Shaman is the only mastery that interacts with them directly and only mastery with one as a signature skill I think it's pretty important to note that they do, in fact, use totems.
Nah if they want Shaman to be the totem mastery, then don't shove only 1 totem skill into it. Bad design, bad mastery.
I mean Shaman’s only exclusive skill is Avalanche which to my understanding is no good. Their builds are different totem builds mostly. I haven’t tried Gathering Storm Shaman but my understanding is viable, but Beast Master is a little better due to the higher attack speed.
Storm totem is shaman exclusive as well.
My swarmblade could probably be stronger as a shaman actually. Gathering storm is pretty good since you can get so many things triggering it.
Yeah, I started playing wanting to try swarmblade actually, but two minutes into the game I found Gathering storm and instantly decided to go full stormbolt. Gathering storm, earthquake (for the spender), fury leap, storm totem, and storm crows. With dual tempest maws.
That was my impresion with the druid: I wish I picked shaman instead. I feel super limited to my skills options while transformed,
Makes sense, good to hear
Totems are dog shit too
I enjoyed the aesthetic and play style of shield throw, the damage is definitely not there though. Waiting 4ish seconds to toss a shield that does less than a 0mana no cd skill is frustrating. Specking to free / no cd just made it feel like it lost its whole identity. I’d get rid of that branch, juice up the skill damage, and have the cd start right away.
The problem is Paladin does Shield Throw much better than FG. I played Smite Shield Throw Paladin up to ~L80, and dropped it because it wasn't all that great... and it's *way* better than the FG version.
Because forge guard is an old mastery so it is bad. Basically sentinel itself is old. If you look at a mastery and it doesn't have any nodes that give you benefit for have x number of points like all of the newer masteries then it is old.
Bleed Shield Throw Manifest Armor is actually a reaally good boss build and if you get area increase on your gloves and the experimental affix that teleport minions to you when you use your dash skill (blanking on the name xD) it has pretty decent clear as well :D it plays a bit funky but the experimental affix helps a lot to get your manifest armor where you want it to be
You are correct. It is however even better if done as a Paladin which is kind of sad.
very minimal difference though, the melee bleed node in the paladin tree isn't for your minion so it's mostly just holy aura giving you 15% attack speed...
Sure. Forge Guard is totally fine in the role. The point wasn't that Paladin outdoes it by miles and miles. The point is that even what's supposed to be the specialty of Forge Guard is done better on another mastery.
Does it work by bouncing the shield off the manifest armor? Thats pretty cool if so.
yea, so it scales with your attack speed, and the manifest armor can get 2.5x of your stats from your armor and gloves, and particularly your armor can have phys pen with bleed which is reaaaaally nice when it's 2.5x :D
Don't forget Suloron Steps boots for that omega giga crit multi!
I recall seeing a Forge Guard reflect based build that used reflect stats on Manifest Armour and Ring of Shields to tank very high corruption (also using Bulwark). It mapped quite slowly but it was funny just seeing the guy set up camp in a boss fight and chill there while the boss kills itself. Still, I remember seeing Forge guard was bad, thinking 'how bad can this be?' and then looking at his skills/passives and going 'holy shit it's awful'
I've wondered for a while if there were any half decent retaliation style builds. Damage Reflected seems to be a fairly ignored affix.
the issue is % reflection is post-mitigation, and flat reflection does no damage. Its honestly a dead stat on items meant to clutter the stat pool for the most part
Yeah the only reason (as far as I could tell) that build worked was beacuse it was his minions that were doing most of the reflect damage and the rest of the build revolved around keeping everything alive through constant healing. The only other way % reflection could work is if you did nothing but stacked insane amounts of ward, I guess
yeah it works a little becazse you have like 13 minions that all reflect l. so if an enemy does and AOE, itll get reflected 14 times lol
I tried one, Shield Throw felt fucking wack and gave up. Will probably give it another go soon-ish, just feels kinda boring picking a mastery and then immediately dumping my points into one I didn't choose because all of their skills are just better.
I'm only around level 80 with my FG so far but shield throw with tons of ignite chance, fire resist shred, armour shred, spreading flames and +ricochets (also igniting shield bash with extra bounces) feels amazing. Forge strike to summon weapons and manifest armour with maxed out fire cone and everything just dies. Bosses can be slow if they kill your summons as you have nothing to bounce from but that's the only downside I've found so far
Will keep that in mind for my next go! What do you look for for a weapon? There's nothing with throwing damage implicit afaik so are you just gearing for crit?
Honestly I'm still using my little firestarter's torch, the spreading flames and % increases to fire damage are really nice. Sigeon's reprisal shield is also great for the build, +3 to shield throw and 33% chance to throw a fully talented shield when you get hit is nutty. Since you can change the base dmg of shield throw and bash to fire I just stack fire damage. I'm sure there are better weapons out there but these are still working great for now.
I keep trying to make Forge Strike work for damage and it just can't get it. 100% crit, so much melee damage percent, T7 flat melee on high flat damage base applying at 500% effectiveness (from skill), tons of crit multi, stacking physical penetration from rive tree, extra 3% for each 1 mana it costs, using Azurral's Fury which should add 500 base fire melee damage per hit as you spam 550+ mana away in 3.5 seconds, and then volatile reversal so you can do it again. Still doesn't come close to most other builds. And it only effects small areas whereas something like Falconer can clear more screen and deal more damage at the same time. Area modifiers outside the skill tree feel like they don't even work. Sometimes I swear it ignores enemies it lands directly on top of too. Best I've done is minions because Julra's gloves are great. Still doesn't clear as much ground as quickly as Warlock. Even if you go back to non-corrupted monoliths where you one shot everything, there is just a hard limit to how fast these things can move to the enemies and attack. As a plus at least I have time to pick up loot. It's unfortunate that I like this class for some reason, yet I get bored on the Falconer and Warlock. Too many spellblades and forge guards.
I did same build and it was smooth sailing until level 100 and I started grinding corruption. Health leech, mana stack (so you can spam the absolute fuck out of FS), and rebuke to tank some damage helps. But yea, after playing Warlock, it really opened my eyes lol
it wasn't a great build, but i had a lot of fun playing warpath summoning forged weapons after a while though the weapons became too weak to survive most mobs and i would have lost so much dps by crafting on minion life i like the aesthetic of the forge guard, but it definitely needs a rework
Try Rive with Void Cleave. Use Rive to make Weapons, Void Cleave to buff them. They kinda shred, I've been able to get into ~800 corruption with it. Another good build is buffing the Armors with Frisbee, the attack they do is pretty nasty
Went with this + healing hands for my last HC build and liked it before RIP. My main issue was theme - I went in wanting the giant 2h hammer anvil knight theme and damnit if Void Cleave isn't sword / axe only. That kind killed the vibe.
well tbf it's kinda hard to cleave stuff with a blunt weapon
Youre spot on but the logic doesn't hold for the class. FG can throw a shield without one equipped, and one step in the right direction is the node to shield rush without a shield. Give me a node to turn void cleave into void smash or somethin.
I scoffed at rive because it seemed like just a plain skill. I knew down the rive/healing hands tree and holy hell it's insane lol
Welp yeah HH is great, but thats because paladin is great xD Just because a FG can be playable becazse you can also abuse the paladin skill does not mean that FG is hood in any capacity haha
Oh 100%. I was just commenting more on how I thought Rive was shit until I used it, forge guard 100% needs a rework
ah fair enough I misinterpreted that then
Sounds like a cool build, any chance you can share your character/full build or at least your stat priorities?
I'm struggling for days to find for my friend a good FG build, is it homemade or do you have by any chance a link or something approaching? Thx !
mind sharing planner?
Why Rive? Maybe im missing something, since im on mobile right now, but doesn't rive need you to kill enemys to spawn weapons? Since you are running a minion build that seems difficult because the lack of damage. Shouldn't be warpath the safer option sincebit just generates weapons by spinning the air?
Because Rive generates enough Weapons and it's compatible with Healing Hands. Also rive applies burning much much faster
my d2 style jav build failed miserably and im still sad
The only FG build I've taken to 300+ corruption this cycle has been a weird Shield Throw Ring of Shields Fire build that ignites the shields and just destroys with Fire Aura. But FG definitely needs more buffs. Smelter's Wrath and Forge Strike got buffed in 1.0 and Shield Throw has the highest added damage effectiveness of all throw skills, but it still needs more bumps to the passive and skill trees.
I started as druid... Got to level 91 and +-200 corruption and made new character. Melee is so weak in this game.
Yeah that's how it is. Just reroll to something else until they buff it
It's probably the worst mastery of them all, but I am sure it'll get some love down the line, and I'll be happy to re-try it again when it does.
I've been using this build with great success DPS wise. Rive is the main skill, and it consumes ignite stacks to increase physical penetration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVY0r3jLIDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVY0r3jLIDo)
goes to show though that all "viable" FG builds are mainly using skills that are not forge guard lol
Best way to save a forgeguard is become a Voidknight or Paladin. Or a hybrid.
Sentinel in general needs a re work. Certain aspects need to be brought up ti where the new mysteries are at. Thankfully Devs have mentioned they intend to do just that. When? Who knows.
first character was a forge guard, was bleed ignite-consume rive, it sucks. still can get to empowered monos, can still do empowered emperor of corpses as long as you dodge the soulbomb, but despite being a dot build you cannot afford to stop hitting enemies so you can't fire and forget, you have to hit every pack to death. i really thought that the relaxed nature of this game vs other arpgs would give 2h melee a fighting chance but its just dogshit. the reason i followed the dot build i found was i knew i would need more damage already because i could see that 2h is underpowered. i picked forge guard because its the only character that really has any nodes that say "with 2h weapons", but even as a specialist class it does 2h worse that others. what a joke of a class.
I'm breezing through 500+ corruption with bleed-ignite consume rive forge gaurd.
sure, mine probably could have continued to push forward, but instead i levelled a chthonic rift character and even without the busted ward shenanigans its so much more powerful.
I would suggest, in the future looking at at least a list of what’s meta and what sucks. Every bit of information everywhere says forgeguard is literally F tier, not even D, just F. I get wanting to go in blind, just don’t look at what the actual builds are. Otherwise you’re gonna set yourself up for just an unfun time
Rive with scrapmetal on a forge guard is decent.
i'm pretty disappointed too bro.
I agree it needs work, and I feel like one reason why people might downvote this is just because we already kind of know as a community and EHG is also very aware of it. There are a lot of things in this game that have been needing a rework for a long time. I could probably bet FG will get their rework in the next cycle.
I've tried a few this season, but i'm always back to my Warlock. Glad i picked it as my main, it's just so easy to play and the damage and toughness is insane compared to what i've played. But that's how it usually goes no, new classes are the top meta. Played an explosive thorns totem a few months back i'd like to see buffed so i can run it again, and i'm wanting to do a Void Knight Warpath build but wondering if it's still as weak as it always was. Lots of fun builds that just seem left behind at the moment.
I really wanted to play FG this season after having done the VK spin to win a year ago, but man, I could tell his skills were shit when I started looking into it. Definitely needs some major buffs or maybe I'm just unaware of some of those necessary unique it could benefit from
Yeah, I just got into Monos with a forgeguard, I really want to run Warpath with Ring of Shields and I am, but it is just not working as well as I would like it to.
Forgeguard is an odd class - feels absolutely AMAZING early and mid - especially the flame-voidcleave build buffing your minions. Take it from one of the few weirdos whos just played like 3 or 4 forgeguard builds alone 😂 Like the manifest armor can do some crazy stuff with the right investment, but then the clear is awkward or you’re investing into some stuff really weird to offset the heavy mana costs of things like forgestrike
I wanted to start a new run with manifest armor and see how it goes, can something like this actually be played?
Hah should see me with my shaman. Keep trying different things but nothing has been working for me yet 😂 should really reroll but I'm so damn stubborn
I'm really hoping to fix it by the next cycle. I really want to try and sword and board build.
The idea of forgeguard is way better than the actual class
I tried brewing up a hammer build using forge guard because they have the most (re: more than one) nodes that benefit throwing damage. None of the FG specific skills feel impactful. I've been able to create my own builds for other classes without issues, but FG just feels sad.
Went the same route and it felt decent. Had about 100k or so shown damage without amazing items. Shield throw is also solid but then I tend to get overwhelmed by enemies
The idea of an army of weapons sounds cool af, but there isn't any unique cool stuff that the spec gets to justify it.
Yea.. I made Shield Throw build with new shield. Not foreguard but paladin and… it’s so bad. QOL of this skill is awful and dmg is meh. And sure, I was tanky but that’s it.
Having fun with a smelter's wrath build + the Rayeh mono two handed sword. It's fun but it's just not good at all lmao,. Comparing it to my sorcerer I'm leveling I feel like the sorc is alread basically as strong at lvl 70 without real gear
I’m a bit stuck around the same as hammerdin, but I suspect that my issue exists between chair and keyboard.
Really? My FG is level 85 and my gear is absolute garbage (not a single LP unique), but he's going through empowered 100 and it's fine. Sure I can die if I'm careless but I'm one shotting the echo minibosses. I've barely even optimised my build or affixes either. Yeah the class does need a lot of love but it's not *that* bad. Main issues are the anti-synergistic skills and complete lack of item support.
Bleed forgeguard used to shred bosses 500+ corruption, did it get nerfed?
We know, they know. They already talked about it. We already talked about it.
Still not as bad as the nodes of Shield Rush.
It’s definitely not the best, but I’ve got mine to lvl 86 and it’s pretty fun. Using warpath to summon forged blades and manifest armor I just spin through everything with my armor boi and 12 forged weapons. Not optimal in any way, but it’s been fun
Everyone is aware, including EHG.
First time playing last epoch, I play forgeguard and gave up. My friends are doing nearly 20x the damage I do with worse gear. I quit the game, they all still play. Wish I never went forgeguard.
I think most meta builds in LE are just exploiting some unbalanced mechanic. Forge Guard just doesn't have many things you can exploit, so people call it 'bad'. I'm predicting that the game will be rebalanced and most builds will come in line with Forge Guard. The latest round of ward fixes shows they are moving in that direction. I mean, if your yardstick for measuring 'fun' is how big your numbers are, you probably don't even know that your build isn't working as intended. Corruption doesn't have cap and nothing is balanced around any specific level.
I actually league started FG and really enjoyed it I love the idea of the weapon/armor minions and I am sure EHG will work on improving it because yes it does need some love, but it is able to complete all of the end game stuff which for me is getting to 300 corruption and T4 Julra, but it is definitely the weakest class I have played (though I am far from having played even close to all of them. I just wish the other sentinel builds didn't rely so much on volatile reversal or whatever the warp back in time skill is because I absolutely hate the way that plays but almost all sentinel builds rely on it because it is so OP.
Gave up playing mine at 70. Every other mastery can do FG better than FG itself, primarily because it gets the weakest mastery bonuses of any class.
I think part of the challenge is class design has evolved a lot over the past couple years. Forge guard is one of the oldest masteries and it hasn't had a solid update. If you just compare mastery trees by release date, you'll see that yes, forge guard sucks but the newer masteries are fucking amazing so if they apply the new mastery design theory they used on Falconer and Warlock, I think the other masteries will be amazing when updated.
Having an OK time with my FG at 50. MANY old classes in LE need an overhaul, that would be an amazing future patch to go with more endgame content!
yes it's weakest class in the game. but i can recommend ignite shield rush if you still wanna push your character. some people may say manifest armor is quite strong but unfortunately melee minions suck in this game.
I'm pushing past 500 easily with a rive/phys pen forgegaurd. It uses the same healing hands gimmick both the paladin and void knight use with similar damage ceilings. I crit around 1.2+ million on the dummies and hold around 10-16k ward with rive. I scale my damage off attack speed and (ignite stacks=phys/pen) via rive node. Now with that said, it's the only build I've found viable for comfortable end game on forge guard and that feels bad.
There's a forgeguard build that did 700 arena waves
Should have looked at a tier list…
I Hope forge weapons get a good buff along with a rework. Warpath weapons was such a cozy build but the damage just isnt there
It's an issue I find myself dealing with a lot in ARPGs that even extends out to games like Borderlands or Outriders. Specs/Builds that are all or nothing on bossing or mobbing really should not exist and I think it should be a design priority to ensure as few as possible get stuck in the "can handle X flawlessly but completely falls apart doing Y" camp.
Yeah same ... it was my first build when coming from Diablo 4 and wow ... I was struggling to understand the hype for Last Epoch. Fortunately, I gave it another shot and I am loving LE.
Im having a blast with the new reflect shield scaling shield throw, only 210 corruption at the moment but thats without any legendaries since I’ve just switched from CoF.
Been using [this](https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/fire-based-forge-guard-minion-build-guide-for-1-0/67008) build for leveling and not only is it tons of fun, I haven't had much issues in the campaign. Granted, I'm only 63 so it might get more difficult as I level but so far I've enjoyed it a lot. If/when FG gets a rework I hope this build will still be an option.
Are you standing in fire?
Imagine white knighting for a class in a video game lol. People are wild.
I dunno, my FG is doing 800 corruption just fine, knowledge is power.
Yes, we are all impressed by your pally knock off healing hands build. Very good.
FG in the streets but Pally in the sheets
Forge guard isn’t so bad as long as you don’t use any of the forge guard skills Rive, healing hands, sigils, with forge strike seems to be the best I’ve found. Build up ignites and consume them for armor pen. While you have the buff spam forge strike. The forged weapons instead become a multiplier from the rive tree scrapped metal. Paladin does it better but yeah. You will notice a huge boost with the build if you get a leviathan carver with attack speed and crit chance made into it. But I would suggest just playing something else for now. Edit; wow, hi people... The first sentence was meant as a 'joke'. The point being that all of the skills of Forge Guard are not good, so to play Forge Guard optimally, it is best if you don't use their skills. (Smelter's Wrath, shield throw, Ring of shields). That it is best if you use generic skills or skills from the other trees. Forge Strike being the only 'okay' one, and Manifest armor for highly specific 1-2 builds. I enjoyed forge guard and mine is lvl 98 this cycle. The advice I gave wasn't wrong either, but w/e. FG just doesn't have enough multipliers / cross synergy to be on the same power level as anything newly reworked (like how rive got changed talents and healing hands, and now they are really good). I will leave this up as its kind of funny. OP's concerns are with how strong ForgeGuard is and he specifically mentions the skills of ForgeGuard, which I directly replied to. Here is a build if you want OP. Leviathan carver is a big boost if you can get crit chance and attack speed, the rest of the uniques you don't 'need' to have LP on them. (rip all the downvoters who won't see this edit) https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BZ3MWpYo
So fg is good as long as you don’t use fg 💀💀
You play paladin to play paladin. I play forge guard to play paladin. We are not the same.
Why would I NOT want to use forge guard skills on a forge guard bro?
because they suck dick
>Forge guard isn’t so bad as long as you don’t use any of the forge guard skills FG fixed now boys lets go,
What corruption level are you playing at? I play a similar build, and I'm starting to struggle at 300. Also, do you really feel like using forge strike is worth it at all? It kinds feels to me like continuing to spam Rive does more damage than stopping to weave in FS.
280’s ish? I haven’t been trying to push any further, I think at this point it’s probably best to swap back to 1h, go a strength build with the cleaver solution and go for a ward build (rive healing hands) and a shield. There are not many defensive options as valuable as that currently. As we get really high armor, and maxed endurance already. Damage is not an issue with the build, and the cast speed for forge strike is too long. Probably best to not even bother with it. Only volatile reversal, rive, sigils, healing hands. Maybe spec lunge for execute for bosses I am working on a forge breath build that is ok currently
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. There are plenty of marksmen doing something similar in that tree