In most cases what matters is the ‘increased melee damage’ that goes along with the skill. As you point out I’m probably missing a few +1 to x skills in the filter. I’d prefer one that I’m using - I had +2 to shield throw for a bit, but in most cases, +x to Manifest Armor is the one you really want - the others are optional. You’ll see the OP has +1 to each of Rive and Shield Rush in his planner - that’s fine since both have Increased melee damage and are worth it just for that.
Hey, been having a good time leveling with this build. I’m in the mid-50’s now working thru the boring monos and I started using “The Last Laugh” sword for now until I can use a Maw in the 60s. It’s got flat crit, attack speed, over 100 flat phys, armor shred, 20% cull and even leech built in.
For now, it’s clearly the best choice for me to be using. But I’m actually wondering if it will be better than Maw+Prism, mainly because it allows you to have a +2 MA helm (plus all the other stats). I can’t test it because I don’t have Prism yet and can’t use Maw yet. Curious if anyone else can or wants to test and see how it feels.
EDIT - Oh also sigils kinda feel bad. They almost never self-proc because my MA is doing all the killing. I’ll occasionally get one when I use Void Cleave to buff the minion but that’s it. Wonder if it’s worth trying something else like Smite, as suggested by @vapourfire
This is what I decided to run, I actually swapped off forge guard entirely because it offered me almost nothing in terms of investment passive wise. You mainly go FG for the flat phys damage and the 150% minion life, but these are easily replaced or ignored. I went paladin to drop sigils and gain holy aura which is a buckload of free stats as well as throwing speed which is hard to get otherwise.
Unfortunately it does not work if you are already a FG. However its something to consider if you dont mind releveling and want something a bit different.
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I briefly considered last laugh but dropped it for several reasons:
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The leech is overkill only, this will not keep your MA alive against Oro/Julra where it matters the most.
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5% flat crit is not enough to get even close to crit capped. With 10% base crit, you will need 900% increased crit chance to always crit. You will not be able to achieve 900% just using solarum bracers and myrmidion plate. Other sources of increased minion crit chance are pretty rare as well for FG. While 100% crit is not strictly neccessary, neither do I currently have it, it would be good to get at least around 90% since so much of our damage comes from the amplified suloron’s step.
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Melee attack speed is not rly an ideal stat for us to scale since the MA’s base atk speed is so ridiculously slow. It is more efficient to scale throwing atk speed for our own character to make MA atk faster. This is why the gloves I am using currently have melee atk speed sealed at T3 to make room for a T5 throwing speed affix.
The only redeeming quality on last laugh is the cull. If you can get a high roll on that with 3/4 LP and slam more flat crit with flat and shred or the likes then it might be competitive with maw.
Regarding sigils, I only use them against oro/julra. Even at 400 corruption, MA will 1 or 2 tap even the thicc-est of rares (unless you rolled crit avoid then your kill time is just rng) so I don’t feel the need to buff MA any further. Against Julra esp, you will find the additional base damage valuable.
I also briefly entertained the idea of incorporating smite but if you self cast smite, you’re not casting ST which means less dmg and this build is all about dmg. Sure you could use smite on throwing idols but those take up so many idol slots which are a significant source of health and resists for us.
I did consider paladin (and even void knight just for the echo chance for ST) when making this build.
First of all, the 60 flat phys on the FG tree is HUGE and definitely not easily replaced. I mean yea sure you could get a 2LP apathy and pray to slam flat dmg and crit but that is just way too unlikely (as if a 1LP apathy flat crit isn’t already unlikely)
On the other hand, your point about holy aura throwing atk speed is actually easy to replace. You can seal either T3 attunement/minion damage and craft a T5 throwing on your rings. If you are using ribbon of blood, exalted rings are easily farmable in dungeon and 1LP ribbon of blood is defo very achievable. So a 1LP throwing atk speed ribbon of blood is defo attainable. On top of that, you can get it on gloves by sealing melee atk speed to make room.
I considered that for the most part, on bosses I maintain my voidcleave, this is 187 flat fire, then a maw has around 200 my weapon only has 175, then we get a tiny 24 from MA itself. This is a whopping 386 flat damage, meaning that FG has 446, this is about 15% more damage. Which is a decent chunk of damage, but not game breaking when this build does such insane amounts of damage.
I guess I just personally value the easier freedom to gear that paladin provides me when basically I am still 1 shotting all the bosses on my way to 300 corruption.
I guess I should preface that I did play this build as a solo character up till about level 97 and 200 corruption when I needed to transfer out to move something to my global stash unrelated to the character.
Thanks, I totally forgot that the flat crit on the helm multiplies. That definitely changes things.
I’m still thinking about smite vs sigils as I’m nowhere near T4 Julra yet.
I’ve never sealed an item yet. Isn’t it RNG which of the 4 affixes seals? You make it sound very easy to use sealed affixes but it sounds stupendously hard to find a perfect item and then get a 25% chance to seal the right affix and if you fail, find another perfect item. Maybe I’m missing something about how it works… as I said, I’ve never done it before.
You seal affixes by using a glyph of despair when upgrading that affix. So no, it is not rng on which affix is sealed. The rng is purely the % chance of the affix being sealed.
Ah, okay, thanks for the explanation. That is a lot more reasonable then. Now I just need to get one or two or those glyphs. 
Hey there… Welcome to the forums…
Others have already mentioned it in replies to you, but I tested the +2 MA helm option and found that the additional points in MA dont really translate into any better performance for the build… once the X% increases from armour helm gloves etc have been maxed & the weapon activated, there rest of the nodes dont really make that much difference… I tried various things like the healing route, the taunting stun immunity route and the fire route - nothing really made enough difference - especially when compared to the +crit affix of the prism. +2 simply doesnt compare… +4 might just be enough if you had a high crit roll Maw but I doubt it.
In the context of this build, I dont find manually proccing Sigils that much of an issue… This is really only a two skill build - ST & Javelin active use so I dont find that tapping Sigils every 4-5 seconds is that troublesome as part of the rotation and as Kryce mentions, its not always needed… If you are manually tapping Smite rather than via auto-proc on throwing idol then the combination of Smite & Sigils can get a little clunky and I dont recommend it… i.e. if you are using Smite, get one 9% smite proc idol and forget about it.
I loathe the Void Cleave minion buff interaction so I dont use it.
With a lvl 100 char, non-Crit legendary Maw & Prism helm, Smite idol version, I am easily able to farm 300 corruption monos… only time I ever die is when I am not watching where I am standing and get DoT’d. Efficiency wise, 250-300 corruption seems to be the sweet spot for my current setup… i.e. grinding time per mono is acceptable vs quality of the drops. Julra T3 is easy … T4 is more challenging but only if you mis-time a mechanic/void pool.
Hey thanks. Yeah I was definitely considering proccing Smite rather than self-casting. Since I’m tossing a zillion shields anyways, it’s free buffs and healing and (hopefully) damage.
I like Void Cleave mostly because it’s the only thing I self-cast that does any damage. Makes me feel slightly less than completely useless. Maybe if smite via ST actually does some damage I won’t feel the need for Void Cleave as much.
I honestly really like the idea of doing this as a Paladin instead for the free stats from Holy Aura. This should also help make up using the smite idol. But I’m not really keen on grinding through the levels again right now, so I’ll stick with FG for now.
Paladin is much better for doing direct damage with Shield Throw… I knicknamed it the Captain America build… It can be very very tanky and do decent damage but it falls off rapidly at higher corruption 200+ because doing damage is lacking and there are so few direct flat throwing damage modifiers - you stay alive for almost anything but it takes forever to kill things and thats not fun. Its a different type of ST build - As a Paladin you can get the nice throwing damage modifiers in the start of the FG tree and you can still use Manifest armour but you miss out on some very important Manifest Armour nodes in the FG passive tree so its a more of a utility/take aggro minion instead of one that deals real damage. Sure you can get Holy Aura, Sigils, RoS but it doesnt really work out well… MA still works and playing as a paladin is still viable, but from my own playing, this FG build is much more powerful.
I dont like Void Cleave as it doesnt fit with the playstyle of your minion ranging ahead and you having to run into the thick of things to cleave him to more damage…
I just dropped a T6 Melee Crit Chance 2H Axe. This is what I need to try for a legendary Maw right? Now I just need to farm a maw with LP? What are the chances of actually getting the right mod? Assume 1/4 for LP1, 1/4+1/3 for LP2, etc? (And yes, the math is a little more complicated than that, but basically just asking if it’s a random chance to get the affix you want.)
As for farming the Maw, is there any way to farm it with more LP easier? Empowered with higher corruption make a difference? Thx!
I don’t know if pushing corruption increases the odds of getting LP on a unique or not. All I know is that I haven’t had any luck getting an LP Maw thus far.
I have a +14 base crit axe waiting in my stash as well, but no Maw to use it on. In the meantime, I’ve put my non LP maw away and am using this. With this setup my MA is ranging from 700-850K crits on the dummy (with void cleave buff). With the Maw and Prismatic Gaze he would max out at 500-600K.
Still looking for upgrades in the area of Crit avoid and a better ammy, but thus far the MA can take anyuthing I throw him at. My only issue is being one shot by crits due to only 20 avoidance right now 
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Overall, loving the build, though.
Yip… Those are the items you need… I have found about 6 x 1LP Maws so far just by doing random Orobyss islands in any Mono runs… I dont focus specifically on any Monos… I just do the Monos I need for other drops/blessings and try to get Orobyss islands with > +12 corruption when I do them… Sometimes I found Maws on negative corruption Orobyss too but that was at over 200 corruption base levels…
Unfortunately I have not been very lucky with the Legendary process tho… Every exalt I have used has had at least a T6 melee crit affix (yes, I hoard exalts) and so far none of them have transferred to the 1LP maw… The Legendary Maw I am using now just has a T7 stun - thankfully the Prismatic Gaze crit / t6 crti gloves provide enough of a boost for the MA crit chance to keep it viable for now…
Yip… imho thats probably the single most important stat for yourself… Took me a while to find the right mix of gear/blessings to tick off CA without sacrificing MA stats… makes you really learn the gear implicits and where you can sneak in a little defence to compensate…
I wonder if you can use the same trick with snapshoot minion that working with abominantion? one sumon set and one defensive for yourself?
I have tested snapshotting the MA with gloves. First pair has armour shred on it and the second without.
I put on the pair with armour shred, summon the MA and then swap to the second pair. MA then attacks dummy and armour shred is applied. So snapshot works.
HOWEVER, when you change instance, i.e. when you then go from town to a mono, the MA is refreshed and no longer applies armour shred. So basically you need to snapshot whenever you enter a new instance. Not rly worth it outside of bosses imo.
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thanks a lot for your feedback, I was also confused as I tested it and see that was not working consistently…so it was because of the refresh 
but I find it more intresting that it works normally!
quite a few discussions about snapshotting, especially with the primalist/acolyte builds… devs are staying mum about it rught now but I know lots of people do use this exploit… am hoping the devs fix it soon as its not something that should work in the game…
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It’s not an exploit, it’s just how the game works at the moment, like using NumLock to autocast skills. The devs may not like it, but it’s how the game works (until they fix/change it). It’s not even an unintended consequence.
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