I’ve been playing Forge Guard for the 1.0 cycle and wanted to post a guide for anyone interested in playing a fairly stock version of the mastery. It can do all endgame content and has pushed at least corruption 200, but it could probably do more ( I’m just farming 2 LP items at the moment and it goes quite fast at this range). This build relies almost solely on Forged Weapons for its DPS and looks to boost both ignite and hit damage in equal measure.
Leveling and Playstyle
I setup this build profile for leveling:
It just shows some helpful item bases and idol combos you can use on your way to monos to keep yourself resistance-capped and healthy as you take on the campaign. Basically, grab yourself a 2hander (preferably a 2handed axe with good implicits), and use item bases with resistances baked in until you can get good blessings.
I also recorded a level 1-100 passive point and 1-20 skill point routes. You just have to use the point slider on the proper page to see their progression. You’ll notice the most important part is that I don’t begin investing in the Forge Guard tree at all until 50 points in. That is because the other masteries have several efficient defensive options that I feel are important to grab ASAP before you begin skilling up forge guard. It’s best to get the boring parts out of the way so you don’t die and can farm gear than the other way around.
For skills just make sure you get multistrike setup to consume stacks with forge strike, and forge strike to not have a cooldown. Everything else should fall in place once you can spam your forged weapons. The campaign isn’t really set up for hitting something 11 times with your weapon all at once so offense shouldn’t be much of a problem. If you need more healing you can fully invest in the flat heals and regen side of healing hands instead of using the Seraph Blade section.
Overall playstyle has you playing multistrike like a cadence skill. You get into a rhythm of doing 2 multistrikes followed by a forge strike. You do this over and over until everything is dead. Being a few hits over or under won’t hurt matters, just try to weave the 2 abilities as best as you can. Not only does weaving these two skills keep your swords up permanently but it also ensures you never run out of mana.
That means you don’t need any outside sources of mana gain besides your passive tree node “Time and Faith”. At first it may feel clunky, but attack speed greatly smooths out the process as you progress in gearing and levels.
Healing hands provides more damage and is your main source of healing. This again gets much better as your attack speed goes up. Rebuke allows you to skip certain mechanics and release pressure from high-density packs when overwhelmed. It also offers another way to heal. I like to hold rebuke and then shift into a void cleave to avoid danger or push through packs.
Void cleave itself is a monster buff giving 188 flat fire damage and 375% ignite chance to your minions. It lasts as long as its cooldown so there is no need to keep track of it. Just sweep it over your minions whenever it is off cooldown.
Monoliths and Dungeons
For monoliths, you would want to obtain gear quality of T18 to T20 with these exact bases:
Getting a good helm and boots should be your first priority as they will make you crit immune. Then you want to start making a decent weapon. I find Radiant Axes to be the best base type for rares. 120 fire base damage (that also makes sure all your attacks do fire damage thanks to how adaptive melee damage works) and up to 16% more damage due to penetration is hard to beat on a fire build.
Next, you should work on getting a good chest piece, gloves, and, a unique sentinel relic. Even with average rolls, you should get enough DOT mitigation to maintain 25% damage reduction. Add the 15% from the passive tree and you’re looking at 40%. Get a good oracle necklace and now you’re in the 50-60% range.
Rings should be turquoise rings for the added minion bonuses, and the belt should be praetorian for the large armor bonus. Idols are also not just arbitrary filler. The layout I have below should be one of the more efficient builds for defense and offense. If you get these exact types you should be able to get up to 3500 health on average and 95%+ resist. You want as close to 95% resist as possible so you are immune to shred damage, but it is not a major priority. If you want to add more health % + fire damage % idols it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world.
End Game Pushing and T4 Dungeons
Once you’ve gotten all your monolith gear and blessings sorted there are a few upgrades you can make. Aspirational gear would look like this:
These are not must-have items, but they are nice to have. To put things in perspective I cleared all content using gear like this:
Merophage - Merophage is a superior weapon to Radiant Axe for 2 reasons. First off it gets 40% attack speed from the Forge Guard tree with a 1.06 speed multiplier ( everything with the sword is 6% faster) vs a .95 speed multiplier( everything with the axe is 5% slower). Secondly, it can give you up to 15% all damage reduction while leeching and makes your swords leech thanks to its implicit. It offers the same or potentially better offensive benefits for your minions, gives you far more personal DPS, and has unmatched defensive utility.
Missing the extra flat fire damage will mean your multistrike will no longer deal fire damage though and neither will your forge strike unless you remember to use at least a +10 fire node in the forge strike tree. Try to seal a flat fire affix if you can but don’t stress over it. You are in a 90% / 10 % split against your minion’s DPS anyway.
Titan Heart - While the extra health this armor gives is good, it is the universal mitigation affix that sets it apart. My exalted champion regalia was only 100 hp short of my Titan Heart and its armor value was 10% mitigation higher.
However, even with that armor deficit Titan Heart granted 5% more physical reduction for hits, 10% more non-physical damage reduction for hits, and 15% damage reduction for all nonhits. As long as you can roll a titan heart with armor/strength rolls it will be superior to any other armor type you could be wearing for mitigation.
Ribbons of Blood - This ring gives a good chunk of health and makes your minions crit immune which is a huge defensive boost. The leech isn’t necessary as Merophage adds leech, and the flat phys will scale worse since your damage will convert to fire, but it is still a positive. Definitely the last legendary to farm a 2LP version of.
Code of the Erased Sentinel - Just try to get frailty chance on this or any sealed gear affix. It’s 18% damage reduction and you hit stupid fast so you can keep packs of mobs and bosses alike doing far less damage.
Conclusion
That’s about it. The build levels great after you get multistrike + forge strike online. Once you get the boring passives out of the way and farm the item bases I mentioned you’ll be tackling end game in no time.
