My suggestions to Forge Guard mastery after 330h and 1k corruption.

[piofernandesoficial]

Hello, after playing more than 330 hours with the least played (and also the least powerful) Forge Guard class, I feel confident in offering my suggestions. Small adjustments to talents and passives that can revitalize and bring powerful and fun builds to this class.
I fell in love with the "fantasy" of the class, its design as a mastery is really good. The problem, in my humble opinion, is that it seems that some small details were missing to enable the mastery to reach the levels that other masteries reach much more easily. I can guarantee that from the beginning I tried to create my own builds and on this journey I was able to notice details that would make all the difference.
So, without further ado and being more objective, I will put these details into topics:

1) The first and most important change would be in the defense of minions.
I can guarantee you that it is impossible to make a build with Manifest Armor that can have good DPS and survive mechanics and damage (especially from BOSS) after 1000 corruption. It will take a one shot every time. To be able to hold out, you need items and talents that offer defense and when you seek this, you give up items and talents that offer attack. Once you increase the defenses (armor, resistance and life) of the minions, I'm sure it will open up a range of possibilities.

2) Still on the Forge Armor skill: another good possibility for change would be to change the number of points needed to go from the "redistribute steel" skill to the titan sword. Needing to put 3 points and then putting 1 point so that the minion can use its weapon really makes you lose some adjustments that would perhaps make the minion have more ways to survive while still being able to give good DPS. Putting the required points into one would help a lot, or even swapping the talents around. First you get the Titan Sword and then you can get "Redistribute Steel". Following the same objective, bring the "Bulwark" skill to before the "Self-Repair" skill or even rework the "Self-Repair" skill since life regeneration is useless if you constantly receive "one-shots".

3) About the Healing Hands skill, which is a skill taken from the paladin skill but which we all know has been very popular and effective due to the large amount of protection provided: adjust the "hand of aurelus" talent so that instead of activating Healing Hands with direct use of Smite, activate it with direct use of spells or throw attack. I can guarantee that just this slight change would make a lot of difference in creating effective builds using, for example, "shield throw".

4) Many people want to play with the "warpath" skill since it is a signature skill of "warrior" lovers in games. Allowing the Healing Hands proc during every Warpath channel would also open up this possibility. This can be done with a simple adjustment to the "cleric's hands" and "unbroken prayer" skills.

5) The "smelter's wrath" ability is simply unusable at the moment. However, the idea of charging time so that it uses a high DPS attack is a great idea for the class's fantasy. However, this needs to be really effective. The impact of the ability needs to be greater for it to be worth pressing this button.
My suggestions would be to rework the talent tree, increasing its damage even further and adding the possibility of proc the "Rebuke" skill while charging. This would probably make it a viable skill.

6) Forge Strike costs a lot of mana.

7) Understanding the more "tank" side of the forge guard mastery, I miss a little more utility. A small rework of the "shield ring" skill so that it generates buffs for allies or grants protection instead of healing would also make all the difference for high group corruption progressions. Decreasing your CD a little more would also make it much more viable. I love playing as a tank class in all games and I can guarantee that for RPG lovers, having the possibility of playing Tank in an ARPG would be a huge difference when playing with friends. This skill has great potential for this, as shields provoke nearby enemies and forge guard has a lot of defense potential with its passives.


Well, those are my opinions on this class. Again, I'm not talking after playing 1 day with the class. I played every day for many hours since launch and these are the things that I could see that would make a big difference in bringing viability and fun to the wonderful fantasy that this class represents. After all, he is the Guard of that Forge that we all use to make items. :)

If you support these suggestions, please help reach developers so they can think about it.

See you in Last Epoch,

Songx.

[Grimbor]

Most of the problems with the class stem from the whole sentinel base class with Void Knight being able to mitigate because of all the void related nodes and high quality gear made for them.

[Camilinha Megazord]

I support this change 100%

[Soulsniper1313]

#4 I completely agree. I was talking in another thread about how it should proc on warpath once per second like smite is in the warpath tree. I wanted to make a pure proc build off warpath and I was so sad when it only worked on the first hit. No need to nerf it for smite or rive but those two can spam it (yes I know channel vs direct casts) but the attack speed and cast speed allows it more than once a second so make 4/4 points cast it with 1 sec cd on warpath and leave others unchanged. Would make warpath a lot of fun being able to proc more stuff with it.

EDIT: Other option would be allow smite to proc it like normal but not on direct cast. Just not sure what other things that would break if anything. But one of those two fixes would make it fun with warpath.

[piofernandesoficial]

Originally posted by Soulsniper1313:

EDIT: Other option would be allow smite to proc it like normal but not on direct cast. Just not sure what other things that would break if anything. But one of those two fixes would make it fun with warpath.

yeah that would be fine as well since warpath can proc smite.

[Scipo0419]

Originally posted by piofernandesoficial:

Originally posted by Soulsniper1313:

EDIT: Other option would be allow smite to proc it like normal but not on direct cast. Just not sure what other things that would break if anything. But one of those two fixes would make it fun with warpath.

yeah that would be fine as well since warpath can proc smite.

The difference is that Warpath proccing Smite is a Warpath node that specifically states "chance per second" where the Healing Hands proccing on melee attacks is a Healing Hands node and reads "when you directly use a melee attack and hit at least one enemy, you have a chance to cast."

You only directly use Warpath once and you could spin for 30s before hitting an enemy, and that first enemy would proc Healing Hands.

[PortalShifter]

I've tried about 8 characters in early-mid game so far and Forge Guard is probably my favorite. Bummer finding out that apparently they're the worst class and bad for endgame.

=(

[Scipo0419]

Originally posted by PortalShifter:

I've tried about 8 characters in early-mid game so far and Forge Guard is probably my favorite. Bummer finding out that apparently they're the worst class and bad for endgame.

=(

They're really not that bad. They're a bit dated compared to the newer masteries and need an update, but unless you're trying to be the best there ever was on the Leaderboards, you can clear all content and decently into higher corruption with Forge Guard no problem.

Play what you like (again, unless you're trying to be competitive.)

[Soulsniper1313]

Originally posted by Scipo0419:

Originally posted by piofernandesoficial:

yeah that would be fine as well since warpath can proc smite.

The difference is that Warpath proccing Smite is a Warpath node that specifically states "chance per second" where the Healing Hands proccing on melee attacks is a Healing Hands node and reads "when you directly use a melee attack and hit at least one enemy, you have a chance to cast."

You only directly use Warpath once and you could spin for 30s before hitting an enemy, and that first enemy would proc Healing Hands.

Yea I know thats why I said cast vs channel. Im saying allowing it to proc once per second (same as smite is for warpath while channeling) it would open it up for warpath to actually use the skill. A giant spinning inferno top sounds very fun but it dosent work currently thus the two options I offered to allow it to work and open up another build. Seems easy enough to code since its there for smite already and only needs small text update on HH to say chance on melee hit or chance per second of channeling.

[Something]

According to Maxroll forge guard is one of the best builds in the game.

[piofernandesoficial]

Originally posted by PortalShifter:

I've tried about 8 characters in early-mid game so far and Forge Guard is probably my favorite. Bummer finding out that apparently they're the worst class and bad for endgame.

=(

Dont get me wrong, Forge Guard is an amazing class and still worth to build. You can play lategame content and hit some high corruption. I'm playing 1050 right now.
The point Iis that they are worse than some masteries and way harder to build in an effective way. Its good and fun, just need adjustment.

[piofernandesoficial]

Originally posted by Chub-Zero:

According to Maxroll forge guard is one of the best builds in the game.

"best" in what terms?
Shield Throw Minion is a good build for DPS bossing yes... if you have someone to make you survive.
Keep in mind i'm talking about higher ranks. You can pretty much play whatever you want 100-500 corruption and you still be able to do it with easy.